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\ • 



FAUSTIN. 


A LIFE STUDY. 

BY EDMOND DE CONCOURT. 

h 

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH 

BY JOHN STIRLING. 


" La Faustin,” the last and best novel of the greatest writer France possesses, 
Edmond de Goncourt, is one of the strongest, most peculiar and most interesting natu- 
ralistic romances recently given the world. It is an episode in a great and capricious 
actress’ life, and the myriad dissipations of Paris are freely drawn on to fill in the 
background and add to the intensity of the scenes. The actress is Juliette Faustin, 
who is preparing to play Phèdre, and is full of the part. She sprang from the lower 
classes, but her art has raised her above the corrupting influence of degraded Paris 
vice. Her sister, Maria, hcnuever, remains in the slough in which she was born, and 
has not an idea beyond it. The contrast between these two women gives the story a 
psychological cast. La Faustin is beloved by an English lord, and adored by all 
Paris. She enacts Phèdre and sets everybody wild. Her supper after the first per- 
formance is attended by numerous celebrities. But the Englishman is jealous, and 
the course of their love is at times exceedingly rough. The portions of the tale treat- 
ing of La Faustin' s retirement to private life and of the closing catastrophe are won- 
derfully powerful and original. La Faustin is a reproduction of the great Rachel, 
and many of the other personages of the book were drawn from real people. It is 
only at rare intervals that such an absorbing novel as “ La Faustin ” appears, and 
that its immense popularity in Paris will be duplicated here cannot be doubted. 





copyright: 

Ob BROTHERS, 




1882 


PREFACE. 


I N these days, when an author proposes to 
write a book upon some woman who has 
passed away, he asks for aid from every one 
who has been in any degree connected with 
this woman’s life, and for letters or papers 
which may chance to throw some little light 
on her interior life. 

Why should not a romance writer (who after 
all is only — a historian of people who have 
no history) why should he not, I say, employ 
a somewhat similar method, not indeed by 
disinterring fragments of old letters, but 
by addressing himself to the living who are 
undoubtedly ready to come to his assistance. 
Let me explain myself. 

I wish to write a romance which shall be in 

( 19 ) 


20 


PREFACE. 


fact simply a psychological and physiological 
study of a young girl who has grown up in the 
hot-bed of a large city. But when I am ready 
to go to work upon it, I find that the books 
written on women by men, need feminine assist- 
ance. And I should be thankful to have this 
assistance, not from one woman, but from many. 
Yes, I desire to compose my romance with the 
aid and confidence of the women who deign to 
read my present words. 

As regards adventures, I of course need no 
hints in that direction. What I want, are the 
impressions of a young girl when intelligence 
and coquetry are simultaneously awakened in 
her nature. I want confidences in regard to the 
emotions awakened in the heart of the girl when 
she goes to her first communion — confidences as 
to the effect produced on her by music. I want 
fully to comprehend her sensations when she 
first enters society; revelations of delicate emo- 
tions and refined modesty — in short, all that 
vast unknown and misunderstood femininity, the 
very life and soul of a woman which husbands 


PREFACE. 


21 


and lovers go to their graves in ignorance of — 
this is what I ask. 

And I make this appeal to my fair readers in 
every land to which this book may penetrate, 
begging them in their hour of leisure, of sad 
memories or joyous retrospection, to set down 
on paper a few of their thoughts and send 
them anonymously to my publisher. 

Edmond De Goncourt. 


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CONTENTS 




Chapter page 

I. THE SEA SHORE 25 

II. A GLIMPSE OF PARIS 30 

III. INSPIRATION 46 

IV. STUDY 61 

V. DISSATISFACTION 66 

VI. AT REHEARSAL 71 

VII. TRIBUTES 77 

VIII. A DINNER 81 

IX. A SCRAP OF PAPER 90 

X. PHEDRE 96 

XI. THE ACTRESS 104 

XII. ART IN COSTUME 106 

XIII. NEW FALLEN SNOW 110 

XIV. MAGDALEN 114 

XV. SUCCESS 121 

XVI. SUPPER FOR FORTY 127 

XVII. DEPRESSION 138 

XVIII. THE COMÉDIE-FRANC AISE 142 

XIX. THE MARQUIS DE FONTEBISE 148 

XX. A BATH ROOM 155 

XXI. THE LOGE GRILLÉE 160 

XXII. SUPPER FOR TWO 164 

(23) 


24 CONTENTS. 

Chapter Page 

XXIII. A LETTER. 169 

XXIV. A NEW RESIDENCE 171 

XXV. A L’ANGLAISE. . 175 

XXVI. TETE-A-TETES 178 

XXVII. THE ACTRESS 179 

XXVIII. THE WOMAN 183 

XXIX. CURIOS 185 

XXX. JEALOUSY AND NERVES . 192 

XXXI. JACK 195 

XXXII. CAPRICES 198 

XXXIII. A NEW PROPOSAL 200 

XXXIV. MARIA FAUSTIN 205 

XXXV. AN AUCTION 208 

XXXVI. DEPARTURE 211 

XXXVII. LEFT OUT OF DOORS 213 

XXXVIII. HAPPINESS 215 

XXXIX. SOMNAMBULISM 221 

XL. L1NDAU 224 

XLI. SOLITUDE 226 

XLII. A SPORTSMAN 228 

XLIII. A STRANGER 230 

XLIV. PREOCCUPATION 234 

XLV. STAGNATION 238 

XLVI. ANXIETY 240 

XLVII. FOREBODINGS 242 

XL VIII. RESTLESSNESS 245 

XLIX. ILLNESS 247 

L. SOLITUDE 249 

LI. DEATH 252 


LA FAUSTIN. 

BY EDMOND DE GONCOURT. 


CHAPTER I. 

THE SEA SHORE. 

rpHE sky was bright with stars, above a phospho- 
X rescent sea. 

On a rocky beach, in a little cove made by the per- 
petual rolling in of the ocean, shadowy forms were to 
be seen lying on the sand in various positions — masses 
rather than forms — for the night was so dark that little 
could be distinguished save that two women were near- 
est the sea, one lying outstretched with arms folded 
under her head, and that her eyes were uplifted to the 
stars might be divined rather than seen. The attitude 
of her companion was vaguely suggestive of tender- 
ness, for she had taken the feet of the other in her two 
hands and was warming them against her own body. 

At a little distance from these two women were 

( 25 ) 


26 


THE SEA SHORE. 


three men seated on the sand whose faces were 
occasionally seen by the light of their cigars. 

Occasionally the strong sea breeze ruffled the gar- 
ments of these silent, motionless women, and sent a 
little shiver up and down their forms. And before 
this grand spectacle of sea and sky, and under the 
influence of the soothing rhythm of the waves and the 
softness of the air, conversation between these men 
and women had entirely ceased. 

Suddenly, through ^the silence and the shadows, came 
the voice of the woman who was lying outstretched on 
the sand. She said, in the voice of one who is suddenly 
aroused from a passionate dream — and apropos of a 
name that had been uttered fifteen minutes before — 

“ No, there was nothing between us then except one 
kiss — a kiss which was given in my dressing-room, he 
standing on tiptoe that he might reach over the screen 
behind which I changed my costumes. He went away 
that night to his Legation. These Englishmen, when 
they are bad are bad — with their whole hearts and souls, 
but when they are good — well — he had a mother and 
she was a French woman ! Three months after that I 
went to Brussels on a theatrical tour — I had sent on 
and engaged a room in the Hôtel de Flandres, yes — 
that was the name — Ah! shall I ever forget it! 

“ Do we not sometimes love a man for the circum- 
stances under which we have loved him? 

“ It was all very strange — that time and that Hôtel. 
All the while he kissed me the air was full of music — 
waves of sound came from under the cushions on 


THE SEA SIIORE. 


27 


which I lay — and there were great gusts of harmony 
which seemed to bear me in his arms to Heaven — and 
in his caresses I felt a divine calm. I have always 
remembered that time — it is a stupid thing to say, but 
the truth is — it seemed to me that our love was that 
of angels. The Hôtel de Flandres is next to the 
Eglise Saint-Jacques, and the organ, as I found out 
the next day, was built into the wall next my room. 

44 1 can’t tell you why,” she continued, 44 but I know 
one thing certainly, which is, that he is the only man 
I ever really loved.” 

44 My adored Juliette, pray spare my vanity,” said a 
man’s voice, in which, in spite of its jesting tone, there 
was a faint suggestion of wounded feelings. 

44 My friend,” answered the woman, serenely ironical, 
f4 this sea air has caused you to lose your sense of the 
position of things. You are a practical man and a 
banker, pray remain just that, for you have immense 
intelligence. We keep house together, but we are not 
lovers you know ! ” 

And La Faustin turned her head away and looked 
off toward the horizon where the floating clouds 
seemed to have massed together just above the pale, 
luminous line of the ocean, like a border carved in 
ebony, and then, tempted by the soft languor of the 
night, resumed her confidences. 

44 But there was a continuation to this episode. 
William took me away some time after that to a 
chateau in Scotland — I don’t know in what county, 
and I never cared to know or to see the place again. 
At the time, however, it was not a disagreeable experi- 


28 


THE SEA SHORE. 


ence. The château was in a most ruinous condition, 
and stood in the midst of an' uncared for Park, the 
foliage was a paler shade of green than any I had ever 
seen before, and it rustled in a most melancholy fashion 
in the Autumnal winds. 

“ But there was one delightful thing in that place — 
a quantity of white peacocks, that came every night at 
dusk to roost on the balustrade and pillars. You can 
have no idea of the strange effect of these great 
motionless birds — their whiteness relieved against the 
old moss-grown walls — and when the moon rose, all the 
recesses of the windows were occupied by these white 
spirits. They looked as if they might be brides in 
their shining wedding robes. And, by the way, it is 
very odd that in all the wonderful fairy pantomimes I 
have ever seen on the stage, I never saw anything like 
that. 

“ My whole life in this place, though, was odd in the 
extreme ; it never seemed to me that I was exactly 
alive. Still, take it altogether, it was the happiest 
time of my life. The days flowed on without an 
event ” 

“And how about the nights?” asked the woman, 
who la} r crouched at Faustin’s feet. 

A little push with her boot was the reply made by 
Faustin, and as the other woman pressed her lips to 
the arched instep, she said, with a laugh : 

“ Come, now, little sister, you must let me have my 
joke ” 

“ To be sure you shall, Maria : you shall say what 
you please,” interposed a gay, masculine voice. 


THE SEA SHORE. 


29 


“ Since that is your decision,” said La Faustin, 
rising with one spring from the ground, “ I think it is 
time for us to go into tea.” 

“ Dear Madame,” said the man who had not before 
spoken, “ when will your début as Phèdre take place 
at the Theatre Français? The journals are full of it, 
but^they fix no date.” 

“ In two months, perhaps more ; probably in ten 
weeks.” 

“ Ladies,” said this man, with a low bow, “ have you 
no commissions for Carsonac ? ” 

“ None, whatever, thank you ! ” answered La Faus- 
tin’s sister. 

“I shall return the day after to-morrow. Adieu, 
Blancheron ! adieu, Luzy ! for I must be off to Havre 
for the night train.” 

La Faustin took her sister’s arm, and followed by 
her two friends, she climbed a steep street, la Rue-de- 
Bellevue, and turned toward a stone châlet which 
looked very new. 


30 


A GLIMPSE OF PALIS. 


CHAPTER II. 

A GLIMPSE OF PARIS. 

U PON a small table, between two paper bags of 
bonbons, one bearing the name of Siraudin and 
the other that of Boissier, were placed a dish of 
partridges cooked with cabbage, and a salad that 
smelt of vinegar. 

In the boudoir where this breakfast was laid, various 
articles of feminine apparel were thrown on the divan 
that ran around the room. In the corners were cabi- 
nets of modern Boule, through the glass door of which 
quantities of priceless china were to be seen, among 
which were scattered things that might have been 
picked up at a fair for two sous — things made of spun 
glass and other trifles. 

Behind the clock, which was a marvel of the last 
century, was tucked into the mirror the card of an 
actor of the Palais Royal, on which it had pleased him 
to draw a well-used fine tooth comb, with broken 
teeth. A half-open door showed a dressing-room still 
in disorder — soiled towels thrown here and there ; on 
the washstand were several dry and mouldy halves of 
lemon ; from this dressing-room came a strong odor 
of musk, which mingled with that of cabbage and 
stale tobacco in the boudoir. 


A GLIMPSE OF PARIS. 


31 


There were three women seated — one on a chair, the 
other on an ottoman and the third on a footstool. 
They were all eating partridges, and from time to time 
they took with their fingers a leaf of lettuce from the 
salad bowl, or a bonbon from one of the two paper 
bags. One of these women, in order to stuff herself 
more at her ease, had taken off her corsets and hung 
them on the back of a chair. 

This woman was called Moumoute, a former lorette 
of bourgeois aspirations, who had finally married a 
leader of an orchestra in the Boulevard de Crime — 
a woman of forty, who had preserved, in spite of her 
stoutness, the soft, gentle eyes of a child. 

The youngest of the three was a girl of seventeen 
or eighteen, who had a dainty little turned up nose, 
all the quick intelligence and astute vice of Paris were 
in her small-featured face, her voice was hoarse and 
her conversation was almost unintelligible by reason 
of the medical terms she used. She was living for the 
time being, by translating Darwin for the Reviews 
and Journals, and answered to the infantine name 
of Lillette. 

The third, a woman of twenty-six, was very silent, 
but her silence was not so much that of resignation as 
of restrained impatience ; her color fluctuated, and 
when she was pale there seemed to be a warm color 
under the surface ready to mount at a second’s warn- 
ing again to her cheeks. The deep blue of her eyes 
lent a shadow to the whites ; her bouffante hair showed 
the delicacy of her temples and the transparent exqui- 
sitely modelled ears. 


32 


A GLIMPSE OF PARIS. 


She wore the toilette that was habitual to her all 
day long, in her own house and out of it, a gown of 
white piqué ; over her shoulders was crossed a small 
shawl of crimson crêpe de chine tied behind à V enfant. 
In this simple toilette her pale, vivacious beauty was 
very remarkable. When she drove out in her open 
carriage, she simply threw over her shoulders a fur- 
lined wrap. 

After having performed for a succession of years 
many secret services for women of society, Josephine 
now lived at the expense of a well known horse-dealer 
on the Champs Elysées. 

And around this table came and went a servant who- 
knelt familiarly on the edge of the ottoman as she 
placed some dish upon the table. This woman reminded 
one of a face of the Moyen Age, in some picture of a 
terrible famine. She wore rouge stolen from her mis- 
tress, and across her whole face was a deep scratch. 
She wore a cap perched on the top of her head, and 
on her tired feet she dragged Algerian slippers. She 
swore and slammed the doors when summoned, as she 
constantly was, to the ante-chamber by the bell. 

“The piece still continues to run,” said the stout 
glutton, pausing a moment. 

“ Yes, to be sure,” answered the hostess. 

“ It will run forever — he told me so — yesterday — the 
new manager — I ran after him in the coulisses,” said 
the clear, flute-like voice of a little boy about seven 
years old, who was half hidden by a Chantilly lace 
mantle. He was lying in a corner of the divan, his 


A GLIMPSE OF PARIS. 


33 


legs crossed in the air, and was rubbing his finger nails 
with a tiny file. The stiff collar, the tie which filled 
the space between the shirt and the vest — all about 
this infant w T as the fac simile of some fashionable man 
about town, from the immaculate sole of his boot to 
the precise parting of his hair. The child had already 
entered the world, joined in conversation, listened to 
confessions and was an interested witness of many 
strange scenes. 

Unfortunate little fellow! he was carried about like 
a pretty little dog, left to sleep on the sofas in the 
cabinets where his mother supped, and often forgotten 
there, was returned to her at dawn by one of the 
waiters. 

“You see, Moumoute ,” continued his mother, “that 
the effect of the electric light on the poisoned woman 
in the fourth act is so wonderful that it alone almost 
makes the success of the piece. But the truth is, my 
friend, that this sort of existence does not interest me 
in the least. I ought to have married and led an honest 
sort of life. I should like to be at the head of a table 
d’hôte for strolling actors somewhere in the provinces. 
I have ten minds to go off to Turin,” she said, as she 
made a pirouette to the other side of the room. Then, 
with another sudden whirl, she came back to the table, 
and brandishing her fork, on which was a mouthful of 
partridge, she added : 

“ Who can tell that I should not fascinate the King 
himself?” 

Faustin’s sister as she spoke re-seated herself in a 

2 


34 


A GLIMPSE OF PARIS 


melancholy sort of way and began to smooth her pretty 
round throat. 

“Look here,” she added, “did you ever notice on 
Moumoute, just here where my hand is, this queer sort 
of lump that comes at about forty, it seems to me some 
days that it is growing in my throat ten years before it 
ought. Why does^ not somebody hear that bell ? ” 

“ Madame,” said the servant, half opening the door 
of the boudoir, “ it is the doctor you employed at the 
Springs.” 

“ Tell him to go West,” answered the mistress of the 
establishment snapping her fingers. 

“ There comes Ragache ! ” she continued, as a gentle- 
man appeared who, with little gestures implored silence. 

“ Ragache ! Ragache ! Ragache ! ” was uttered in 
three different keys by the lips of the three guests. 

Ragache was a ventriloquist who extracted from the 
heels of his boots, puns and jests and imitations of the 
actors of the day. Naturally, he was the idol of the 
house. 

“Hush! Hush! Hush!” said Ragache, coming into 
the boudoir as if it were a stage. “It is whispered 
throughout Paris that Pousard is playing the deuce 
with Titania. What will be the result of this flirta- 
tion? At all events we must favor the mystery and 
we must speak very softly.” 

Then turning toward Moumoute, who continued to 
eat very calmly, he assumed an attitude of profound 
admiration. 

“Ah! Moumoute,” he exclaimed, will you never 


A GLIMPSE OF PARIS. 


35 


make up your mind to accept my devotion?” He 
pretended to sob and wiped his eyes. 

“ Do stop your nonsense,” cried Lillette, who hated 
men. 

“ Hush ! child ; you are not expected to know any- 
thing except what your English scientist teaches you.” 

“ Madame ! madame ! it is the gentleman who sends 
asparagus from Aranjuez to the Paris market.” 

“Where on earth did I ever know him?” murmured 
Maria with a little frown. “Never mind. Tell him 
too, to go West.” 

“Or to Spain,” interposed Ragache, rolling up his 
eyes until the whites only could be seen — “ to the land 
of sunshine, of poetry and of the Cid.” 

Carsonac, the owner of this establishment, now 
appeared from another room. He was buttoning his 
light paletot, over a black coat. 

He was a stout man with thick grey hair. His 
moustache was dyed and waxed. His eyes were gener- 
ally half veiled by heavy lids, but when he uttered 
some wicked or malicious remark they opened widely 
enough and flashed like steel. 

“What! breakfasting here? Why on earth don’t 
you go to the dining-room, Bonne-Ame ? ” 

“ Because this is much cosier,” answered Maria, 
“ we all like it better, don’t we ?*” and she appealed to 
her friends. 

“ Oh ! yes, I see, and you have the dressing-room 
convenient in case of an attack of the nerves after 
some friendly explanation,” he replied. “Well! upon 


36 A GLIMPSE OF PARIS. 

my word, you are comfortable,” Carsonac continued, 
as he turned and saw the loosely-robed Moumoute. 
And turning to another friend of Maria’s he said : 

“Well, fair Indolence, I suppose you know that the 
man who pays such a heavy price for your love is oil 
the point of falling a prey to the Provençale. I am 
happy to be the first to tell you this.” 

Josephine did not reply. He was standing close 
beside her now. She advanced her head with a slow, 
undulating movement of the long throat, and when it 
was the height of his arm, she bit it with her white 
teeth through the sleeve. 

“ That hurts — you little fiend ! ” he exclaimed. 

The woman smiled. A singular flame kindled in her 
deep eyes. She lighted a cigar, and gliding from the 
chair to the ground, she lay with her white robe and 
red shawl gathered around her, as motionless as a 
panther ready to spring. 

“ The truth is, Bonne-Ame,” said Carsonac, “ that 
things are not going well at the Théâtre Français — 
Faustin ” 

“There, that will do. Remember that I will not 
allow you to speak of my sister,” said Bonne-Ame, 
very decidedly. 

“Well, are you here?” asked Carsonac, turning to 
Ragache, whom he had pretended not to see. 

“ Yes, I came to see if you had a box at your 
disposal.” 

“ No. A single seat, in a good, strong draught, is 
all I have to offer.” 


A GLIMPSE OF PARIS. 37 

Ragache, quite unmoved by this rudeness, went up 
to Bonne-Ame, and her friend heard her say : 

“ Don’t mind it. He is out of temper, to-day, but 
if you will do your best for the success of his 
play, (for Carsonac was the author of a new drama) 
I will see what can be done. You know when he is 
deeply interested in one thing, he can’t think of any- 
thing else. Won’t you have a glass of something?” 

Ragache was picking from a bottle a brandied apri- 
cot, with the assistance of a cork-screw, and as he ate 
the yellow fruit, he said, “ Stupendum ! I feel as if I 
were dying in the tunic of Madame Duchenois ! ” 

“ I don’t understand ! ” Carsonac said, coldly. 

Ragache, totally unmoved, retired with his back to 
the door, imitating a Chinese playing a triangle. 

“ Illustrious author ! ” he exclaimed on the thresh- 
old, “have you thought of the effect of remorse on 
the conscience of a concièrge who has committed a 
crime. Study that out for one of your plays; think 
what a point it would be that every time when his bell 
is pulled at night it awakens his conscience ! ” 

Ragache was immediately replaced by a tall blonde 
fellow with a bald head. He held a much worn and 
shiny hat against his breast — his whole figure and 
attitude was the personification of obsequiousness. 

Carsonac dropping the nerveless fingers which had 
been offered him, said roughly: 

“ Really, Planche mol, you ought to take the trouble 
to dry your hands — their dampness is very disagreea- 
ble to people.” 


38 


A GLIMPSE OF PARIS. 


Planchemol drew back with a frightened air, and 
seeking a refuge among the women, seated himself 
by the side of Bonne-Ame ; her friends presently 
heard her say to him : 

“ If you can get such a plot as we want, I am quite 
sure that you can write a play with him. And you 
know when he is deeply interested in one thing ” — 

“Monsieur, the small young man who has been here 
three times wishes to speak to you.” 

“Show him in.” 

A near-sighted debutante endowed with the double 
timidity of near-sighted people and debutantes — entered 
the room. He was greatly disturbed by the sight of this 
great man, and by the unexpected presence of the four 
women as well as by the indolent ease of their attitudes. 

“ Listen, young man,” said Carsonac without offer- 
ing him a seat, “ every plot offered me I find at first 
utterly hopeless and dull. Three or four months 
pass awajq and some of the ideas suggested to me 
have remained in my memory, and oddly enough, I 
then find some of them excellent. But by that time I 
have completely forgotten the person who brought 
them to me, and the plot seems to me entirely my own. 
Do you understand ? ” 

The youth, greatly disturbed, turned to find the 
door. 

“This way young man, this way. You have no 
especial desire I presume, to enter the dressing-room 
of these ladies! ” 

“Tell me Lillette,” said Carsonac, after a few 


A GLIMPSE OF PARIS. 


39 


minutes, “when I do you the honor to trust you to 
those solemn sexagenarians to take you home to your 
father, I should really much prefer to place you in a 
fiacre than to think of you sitting on the knee of one 
of those old men. 

“ Oh ! you need not be in the least troubled when I 
sit on the knees of m} r friends, be they old or young ; 
it won’t be on those of a subscriber to the Manuel des 
Hommes Affaiblis like y ourself ! ” 

“ Pretty good ! little one,” laughed Carsonac, quite 
exhilarated by a speech so like his own. 

Then interrupting the dialogue which was going on 
in a low voice between Maria and Planchemol: 

“Ah! Planchemol, what has Murger’s ghost whis- 
pered to you of late ? ” 

“Something sir, which I should not venture to 
repeat before these ladies.” 

Planchemol went up to Carsonac and said a few 
words in his ear. 

“ Why, that is my own joke ! ” answered Carsonac. 

“ Monsieur’s old servant wants the recommendation 
you were kind enough to promise him.” 

“ There it is on the mantel shelf ; give it to him.” 

“ Why did you send him away ? ” said Planchemol, 
trying to be easy and join in the conversation. 

“ He was an excellent servant,” said Carsonac in his 
most malicious voice, “ but he came from Monsieur 
Ricord, and when he opened the door he did not choose 
to say good morning to the friends of Bonne-Ame ! ” 

Bonne-Ame’s eyes flashed — her lips moved, but she 


40 


A GLIMPSE OF PARIS. 


did not speak. She mechanically poured out the few 
drops of wine remaining in the bottom of the glass, 
and began to extend them over the waxed cloth with 
a finger on which was an antique ring having upon it 
a quaint inscription. 

Planchemol had departed and Carsonac, standing 
in front of the mirror, was enveloping his throat in a 
white foulard. 

“What has gone wrong, Bonne-Ame?” he said over 
his shoulder, as he noticed her thoughtfulness. 

“Nothing, nothing at all — only — it is really ver3 r 
curious, but I just happened to think of something. 
Do you really want me to tell you?” And Maria in 
a low, suppressed but musical voice uttered these 
words : 

“ I had a very strange dream last night. I was in a 
garden — such a garden as we only see in dreams. I 
saw a white shadow coming toward me ; I recognized it 
at once as Rose Chéri. In an instant she was at my 
side. She said to me 4 We were friends on earth, why 
do you avoid me? We are very happy here, and soon, 
very soon, you will join us.’ Behind her I perceived 
several dear shades — ghosts of persons who were dead 
or about to die — and these too, spoke to me. I awoke 
happy and not in the least saddened. I thought, so 
wonderfully real was this dream, that the Good God 
had permitted Rose Chéri to warn me in order that I 
might have time for preparation. But wrap yourself 
well up to-day, for the wind is from the northeast, and 
after the inflammation of the lungs which you had two 
years ago ” 


A GLIMPSE OF PARIS. 


41 


Carson ac became very serious. He slowly put on 
his gloves, then he took them off, rolled them up and 
thrust them into his pocket, turned to leave the room, 
and came back, then went to the door, opened it and 
stood for a moment, holding it in his hand, and then 
going fairly out, he put his head back and addressing 
Maria said : 

“You did not see me in the garden behind Rose 
Chéri, did you ? ” 

Maria did not look round but shook her head nega- 
tively, not too decidedly however. As soon as she 
ceased to hear her lover’s footsteps she uttered a long 
shrill laugh, interspersed with scattered phrases : 
“ Why don’t you all laugh with me ?” She cried : “ He 
will be as meek as Moses for the next week. Ah! 
what a selfish brute that man is ! Do any of you know 
the bargains he has driven with me and for me ! These 
men give us money, and boast of it, but we earn it all 
twice over. I don’t know what Carsonac has in his head 
now — whether he wants an interdiction from the Cen- 
sor removed, whether he is manoeuvring to be deco- 
rated — it does not matter, however. To gain it, he 
flings me at all the powders that be — ministers, secre- 
taries and valets. But for Flamme de Punchy do you 
think that Machin would have had the renewal of his 
privileges for the last ten years. And do you suppose 
without La Cachalot, Chose would have had the patron- 
age of His Excellency ? And I have been compelled to 
receive them all — the old imbeciles, the Ministers of 
State and the young fools attached to the Bureau of 


42 


A GLIMPSE OF PARIS. 


the Press. It is too much î I am quite sure he means 
to become an officer of the Legion of Honor.” 

She started from her chair and began to pace the 
room. Her rapid motion seemed to augment her 
excitement, and Maria poured forth words which spoke 
volumes and described one of those burning hatreds 
sometimes, nay often, existing between persons allied 
by their crimes — an alliance reminding one of that 
between two convicts attached to the same ball who 
are ready to kill each other. 

By degrees the tempestuous wrath of Maria became 
assuaged. The expression of her face regained its 
usual calmness. She threw herself on the divan and 
with her head buried among her cushions, she said 
with a droll little wink : 

“ One thing you may be sure of however, my dears, 
and that is whenever he makes me take a lover in 
order to advance his commercial enterprise, I have my 
revenge. Yes, I invariably take another and one after 
my own mind. 

“ Oh ! yes, to be sure, an officer,” sighed the stout 
Moumoute, forgetful at the moment of her marriage 
and her husband — “ those men are charming — they 
always have biscuits and chocolate in their rooms. They 
wear the most beautiful slippers and dressing gowns.” 

‘‘Who talks here of officers?” asked Maria with 
stinging contempt. “They are only interesting when 
we are young enough to press our faded flowers between 
the leaves of the last poem we read ! No, officers are 
too ingenuous for my taste.” 


A GLIMPSE OF PARIS. 


43 


And this terrible cynic, this woman who was still 
beautiful, with blue eyes, and hair the color of ripe 
grain, went on to discuss in the most cold-blooded way 
everything that should have been holiest and purest 
in love when love is real. 

“ Madame, a gentleman with a Polish name — a crou- 
pier from Monaco.” 

“You can say to him, too, ‘young man, go West!*” 

“And the copyist of Madame’s prayers begged me 
to give her this little package.” 

“ Ah ! yes ; they are prayers I wanted copied from 
my books, which were too large for traveling,” said 
Maria, with a little confusion, as she slipped the 
package under her pillow. 

“ Bless me ! ” said Lillette, pointing to the ceiling 
with a gesture like a mischievous school-boy, “you 
don’t still believe in the existence of any one up there, 
do you ? ” 

“ You little villain ! ” cried Bonne-Ame, leaping 
from the divan and taking Lillette by the shoulders, 
“ I may be all I am, and that is bad enough, but I 
wont stand such things said as that.” Maria gave the 
girl a little shake. “I tell you, you shall not say such 
things here. And after this you need not expect to 
get my old black velvet gown that I promised you.” 

A tremendous pull at the bell was now heard. 

“ Bon Dieu ! Holy Virgin ! Will visits never end 
to-day?” swore Mai Fichu, in a high state of exaspe- 
ration. She finally decided to answer the imperative 
summons. 


44 


A GLIMPSE OF PARIS. 


“ I know who it is, my sister always rings in that 
way when she is on her high horse,” murmured Bonne- 
Ame, in a tone in which there was a shadow of 
apprehension. 

Almost immediately La Faustin appeared in a black 
toilette of faultless elegance. 

She bowed coldly, with her eyelids, so to speak, and 
said to her sister, quietly, “I have come for you.” 

Faustin’s entrance had caused a great silence to fall 
upon the assembled guests, and Bonne-Ame herself, 
who was by no means timid, on this occasion was dis- 
turbed by the imperious brevity of the words, and put 
on her hat with the distracted manner of an actress in 
a pantomime. 

Faustin stood with her elbow on the mantel-piece 
and mechanically lifted the sole of one boot to the 
chimney, in which there was no fire. 

“Oh! Aunty, is that the jet waist from Madame 
Godesse?” said the little boy, who had just awakened 
from his nap. “ Tell me, did you put it on for me, 
that beautiful jet waist ? ” * and his eager e} r es, which 
already understood chic, were riveted on the costume 
of La Faustin. 

The aunt did not reply to the boy, but said half to 
herself : 

“ I am very thirsty ! ” 

Will you have some champagne?” called her sister 
from the dressing-room. 

“ No.” 

“ Then what will you have ? ” 


A GLIMPSE OF PARIS. 


45 


La Faustin looked from the bottles on the table, and 
from them unconsciously out of the window which 
commanded the Quai de la Megesserie. Suddenly she 
walked to the table and took from it among the glasses 
of all epochs, a Venetian goblet with a spiral, milky 
stem, and she said to the servant : 

“ You see that man over there, go and get me a glass 
of liquorice water and bring it to me down stairs to 
my carriage.” 

“Well! here I am! ’’cried Maria, adding a slang 
expression much in vogue among actresses, to signify 
that they are ready to go on the stage. 

And La Faustin went out with her sister. 

“ To-morrow you are coming to me ? ” said Josephine, 
holding Bonne-Ame by the sleeve, as she passed. 

“To-morrow, my dear? Ah! no, that is quite 
impossible. The old Manager is to be buried, and 
it is proper that I should look as if I went to pray 
for the old rascal. 


46 


INSPIRATION. 


CHAPTER III 


INSPIRATION 


N the staircase, which was also the staircase to 



V-/ the Theatre, the two women were obliged to 
stand against the wall to allow an avalanche of figu- 
rantes with nails in their shoes to pass. They came 
from rehearsal, and jumped down the stairs four at a 


time 


“ One moment — just wait a moment,” said Bonne- 
Ame, going into the porter’s lodge where she had a 
short colloquy with a groom, who was lazily blacking 
a pair of boots; by his side was a big dog who had 
just acted his part in the play. 

“ And where are we going ? ” asked Bonne-Ame of 
her sister, just as the latter returned her glass to Mai 
Fichu. 

“I don’t know in the least; tell Ravanac to turn 
into the Boulevard.” 

The carriage rolled off. 

“Upon my word, you are very amusing!” said 
Maria, complainingly, after some ten minutes of 
unbroken silence. 

“ How stupid everything is — everything ! ” sighed 
La Faustin, lifting her arms with a despairing gesture. 
“This morning I rose, meaning to do something dif- 


INSPIRATION. 


47 


ferent from other clays; to go somewhere that I had 
not been before. But what am I to do ? Where am 
I to go ? Look at those shop windows, do not all the 
goods displayed there look gray and dull? Have you 
never days when you pant and pine for something else 
— for some unexpected thing to happen ? — what, you 
know not and care not Î ” 

Then leaning back in her carriage, La Faustin mur- 
mured these rhymes of Alfred de Musset: 

“ Que ne l’etoufïais tu cette flamme brûlante, 

Que tou sein palpitant ne pouvait contenir. 

Ne savais tu Jonc pas, Comedienne imprudente, 

Que ces cris intentes qui te sortaient du Cœur 
De la joue amaigrie augmentaient la pâleur. 

“But what is the carriage stopping for?” said 
La Faustin, leaning out of the window. Suddenly 
her sister beheld her on the ground making her way 
through the most crowded part of the street, and close 
to the gutter, from under the very feet of the horses, 
despite the shouts of the coachman she picked up 
something which she wiped with her lace-trimmed 
handkerchief. 

“Yes,” she said, going back to her sister, “it was a 
horseshoe, just as I thought; it brings good luck you 
know, and this is the third I have found.” 

Immediately the woman who had professed such 
intense weariness was suddenly transformed into a girl 
whose every motion was grace, whose every word was 
a caress, and who seemed charmed with everybody. 

“ Ah ! Maria, you did not wish me to take you from 


48 


INSPIRATION. 


your friends, but I needed you, child, more than they 
could do. There are moments, dear, when I must have 
you. Do you remember,” Faustin continued, “that 
confectioner in la Rue Montesque — he who invented 
some imitations which were perfectly wonderful, for a 
piece where Arnal ate strawberries by the handful? 
You were far braver than I even then, and it was always 
you who went to change the sous we had made by sing- 
ing in La Cour des Fontaines, and when in the house 
there was hunger, it was you sang and gave us the 
courage to sing also. And then our orphaned lives 
afterwards, Maria, do you remember all that?” 

“ Yes, I remember I was even then the brave one, and 
also the least scrupulous, and yet it was you who then 
as well as now, led me by the nose. And why? Per- 
haps because you have talent, and I have none. No, 
none whatever, but plenty of go!” And Maria laughed 
jovially. “ I knew what I was about, I think, when I 
gave up the stage after my first appearance. I should 
have made a dead failure had I persisted, and now I 
am established in society, by the assistance of Provi- 
dence,” she added with her hands on her hips, in the 
attitude of a celebrated actor, in his portrait by Ingres. 

The coachman drew up in front of the Madelaine, 
waiting for orders. 

“And you remember too, little Maria, that it was 
you who always found our amusements,” said La 
Faustin. 

“ Yes, but in those green and salad days, we were 
easily amused ! Since then 


INSPIRATION. 


49 


“You must exercise your imagination now, Maria — 
invent something for us to do out of the common way ! ” 

“I can only suggest those we all know — the inno- 
cent pleasures — for I of course know none that are 
not such — of a Parisian day. There is the drive 
around the Lake — The Invalides — The Column Yen- 
dome — A visit to the monkeys at the Jardin des 
Plantes. But if there is anything you want that is 
not so innocent, say so, I am ready to serve you.” 

“And can you think of nothing better ?” sighed 
La Faustin, sinking back among the cushions with 
profound discouragement. 

Maria gave a series of little nods and then exclaim- 
ed abruptly : 

“ Tell me, Juliette, why is there nothing at the 
Théâtre Français?” 

“ There has been one rehearsal, if it may be called 
such, but it was at my own room, and that has been 
all,” answered Juliette, arousing herself with a start. 
“ I have not by any means acquired the part, not at 
least as I intend to play it. Ah ! I have it ! I have 
something to do to-day. Ravaud ! Ravaud ! drive to 
Batignolles, Rue de Louis , No. 37.” 

“To Batignolles? What on earth do you mean to 
do there ? ” 

“ Guess ! ” 

“ You mean to consult a fortune-teller?” 

“No, but you need not continue — you will never 
guess.” 

Suddenly over the laughing face of La Faustin 
3 


60 


INSPIRATION. 


descended a cloud of absorption. A shadow filled her 
half-closed eyes ; her forehead was knotted; two swell- 
ings came out over her brow as on a child’s who has 
a difficult lesson to study. Along the temples and 
the sides of the cheeks was that peculiar pallor caused 
by the cold wind, and there was a faint smile on her 
parted lips. 

La Faustin allowed her sister to repeat her questions 
several times, without replying to them. 

“Ah! Juliette, here we are at No. 37 !” 

The two women descended. 

“ I shall be here some time,” said La Faustin to her 
coachman.” 

“There does not seem to be any porter in these 
parts,” said the sister. 

“ Oh ! I know very well where to go,” answered the 
actress leading the way. 

The two sisters climbed the stairs. At the top of 
the house they reached a very wide corridor. La 
Faustin counted the doors and stopped at the seventh. 

She knocked. 

Heavy steps were heard ; the door opened about an 
inch and in this narrow space appeared a hooked nose 
surmounted by long white hair, on which was placed a 
little toque embroidered in gilt braid. 

“ These ladies are in error,” said the old man 
turning his head and addressing some one within the 
room. 

“No, you are certainly Monsieur Athanassiades, and 
this is a line from one of our mutual friends,” and 


INSPIRATION. 51 

Juliette gave him the card of an illustrious acade- 
mician. 

u Ah! come in ladies, come in,” said the old man, 
after a glance at the card, “ but pray take care where 
you step on account of my little friends.” 

The sisters entered a high room, formerly occupied 
by a photographer, and now tenanted by numerous 
rare and lovely birds, flying about in entire liberty. 

“ How lovely ! ” cried Maria, and almost immedi- 
ately added, as she looked down on her dress, “they 
are dirty little wretches, though ! ” 

The room, in spite of the untidiness of the birds, 
was, however, as delicately clean as the apartment of 
an old maid. It had no other decorations than three 
bas reliefs in plaster from the Parthenon, filling the 
place on the wall usually occupied by a mirror, just 
above the pipe of a small stove that threw a reddish 
glow on the square of oilcloth upon which it stood. 

A shelf ran around the entire room ; it was loaded 
with books in Italian bindings of white vellum. In a 
corner an open door showed jars standing on the 
shelves and a salad dish piled with eggs. There was 
only one chair in the room, but in a recess doing duty 
as an alcove, was a wide plank standing on trestles. 
On this was a mattress covered with a Turkish rug, 
on which the old man slept at night. 

The room was filled with the combined odors of 
birds and pastilles. 

“ Ladies, what can I do for you ? ” said the host, as 
he invited the sisters to seat themselves on his bed, 
which did duty as a sofa. 


52 


INSPIRATION. 


It was La Faustin who replied : 

“Monsieur Saint Beuve tells me,” she said, “that 
there is another Phèdre than that of Racine, and he 
told me at the same time that you were the man who 
could best explain this to me, for you know so well 
the old Greek language. What I want — but I really 
do not know what I want. However, I am curious to 
hear you read Phèdre in the original. I feel that it 
may give me some new ideas. I should like to be 
permitted to come to you as a student would have 
gone in other days to Pericles, and take away with me 
a little of the music in my memory.” 

The old man pushed his chair up to the shelf of 
books, and gathering around his thin form the floating 
folds of his cotton dressing-gown, under which could 
be detected a heavy flannel undershirt and long 
woolen hose, he mounted on the chair and selecting a 
volume from among the others, said, in the tone of a 
custodian who shows some sacred relic : 

“ Ladies, the divine Homer ! ” 

Then, taking another volume, he descended from 
the chair, piously wiped off the dust on his sleeve, 
and laj'ing the two books on a small table which he 
drew to his side, he opened at a page which he ten- 
derly smoothed with the palms of his old wrinkled 
hands. 

His enormous spectacles were steadied on his nose, 
and after leaning over the volume for a moment in 
silent ecstasy, Athanassiades lifted his head and said, 
with his eyes fixed on the ceiling : 


INSPIRATION. 


53 


u Hippolyte ! ” 

The scene takes place at Trezène, before the Palace, 
at the entrance of which stand two statues, one of 
Diana, the other of Venus. The old man then read 
the first two verses of the great tragedy. 

“Forgive me, Monsieur Athanassiades,” interrupted 
La Faustin, 44 I have my carriage at your door, and if 
you will bring your book, I will take you home with 
me. You will dine with my sister and myself. My 
doors shall be closed to all other guests, and we shall 
have a charming evening.” 

“ Oh ! Madame ! ” answered the old man, 44 if it were 
but possible for me to enjoy such a pleasure ! But 
from November until the end of May I am a close 
prisoner in this chamber, and you can, therefore, com- 
prehend the pleasure I gain from these birds. All this 
time I am absolutely forbidden to go out. The air of 
your winters would kill me ! ” 

La Faustin then noticed that paper was pasted over 
all the cracks around the large bay window. 

The old man returned to his reading, interrupting 
himself from time to time with exclamations in French 
like these : 

44 Your Racine, Madame, has left this out.” 

44 Your Racine, Madame, has not translated that.” 

44 Your Racine, Madame, made a sad boggle of this.” 

44 You are bored I fear, Maria,” said La Faustin, 
tenderly. 

44 No ; occasionally I like this sort of thing, and your 
Athanassiades is delicious ! ” 


54 


INSPIRATION. 


Daylight had faded, the old man lighted a lamp and 
continued to read, but at each change in the dialogue 
he looked up at a cuckoo clock above the heads of the 
two women. 

“ I am afraid, Monsieur Athanassiades, that we are 
intruding,” said Faustin, after noticing this manœuvre 
of the old man’s, repeated over and over again. 

“No, no, ladies, only I adhere to the custom of my 
own land, and I dine earlier than the fashionable world 
of Paris.” 

“ Ah ! I see ; this is the hour your dinner is brought 
in, and you must eat it just the same as if we were 
not here,” said La Faustin, with the tyrannical air of a 
woman who is determined to satisfy her last caprice. 

“ But, ladies, my dinner is never brought to me. I 
prepare it myself. It is a very simple affair, for I 
belong to the school of the Venetian, Comaro — eggs, 
dry fish, black olives. You can see from where you 
sit the contents of- my store-room.” 

La Faustin rushed to the closet and, with the curi- 
osity of a school-girl, took up bottle after bottle, and 
held them up to the light. 

“ Oh ! What queer little fish ! They are so slim and 
so dry that they look like alumettes.” 

“ Yes, they are tziros , they are to be eaten when one 
drinks raki .” 

“ And no meat ? Do you never eat meat ? ” Mon 
sieur Athanassiades, this is very strange.” 

“Ah! here are anchovies,” she continued. “I am 
glad to see them. And do you mean to say that your 


INSPIRATION. 


55 


dinner every day consist of eggs. I should think you 
would become deadly tired of them.” 

While she spoke Faustin had tucked up her train 
and turned up the front of her dress à la laveuse , 
securing it with pins ; and when this was done, in the 
laughing tone of command used by a woman at a picnic, 
she said, gavly : 

“But to-day you are to sit still and we are to do 
your cooking for you. I do not believe you know 
anything about an omelette with anchovies — a dish 
which nobody can cook like myself — and to day you 
will eat one prepared by my own white hands. Now, 
Maria, hand me that little pan I see down there, and 
you, Monsieur Athanassaides, will please put a little 
charcoal in your stove.” 

u Oh ! ladies ! ladies ! you overwhelm me with con- 
fusion,” stammered the old gentleman. 

“Let us have our own way, my good friend, my 
sister and I were not born with silver spoons in our 
mouths, nor with a cook at the foot of our royal 
cradles,” said Maria, who by nature became quickly 
familiar with those about her. 

“ So much the worse for us all ! ” cried La Faustin, 
gayly. “ See here, Monsieur Athanassiades, see how I 
cut up the anchovies, neither too large nor too small; 
and now this is my great secret which I confide to 
you; they must be cooked just one moment on the fire 
with a mere suspicion of cumin — oh ! the merest dash.” 

“Oh! ladies, ladies!” Athanassiades continued to 

sigh.” 


56 


INSPIRATION. 


“ Keep up your spirits, I beg of you,” said Maria, 
“ for you disturb us in our operations.” 

“ Monsieur Athanassiades, attention ! You must see 
how I turn the omelette — one, two, three, there it is ! 
And hasn’t it a lovely color outside, and is it not all 
soft within ? ” 

“ Now, Maria, is everything ready ? ” She continued : 
“ Is the plate hot.” 

And amid the fluttering of the birds, kept awake by 
the unwonted movement and bustle of the little fête, 
the two sisters with the alertness of soubrettes at the 
theatre, served the old gentleman who had ceased to 
sigh and had abandoned himself to the charm of this 
caressing feminine gayety, which warmed his old heart. 

“ Well, Monsieur Athanassiades, is it a success? are 
you pleased with your cook ? ” asked La Faustin, with 
a face as bright as that of a child. “And now the 
second course, olives. Oh ! how good they are ! ” she 
cried, as she ate several. “ Taste them, Maria.” 

“ Thanks, I am more carnivorous than that ! ” 

“ Monsieur has finished ! ” said La Faustin, and in 
one minute had swept from the table all she had 
placed there ; her movements were characterized by a 
certain tempestuous grace, all her own. 

“ And I,” sighed the old Greek, as he took up his 
Euripides in that mood of smiling tenderness which is 
the happiness of the aged, “I place all my old Greek 
at your disposal, ladies ! ” 

“And your coachman, Juliette?” interposed Maria. 

“ 1 had utterly forgotten him. Please go down and 


INSPIRATION. 57 

tell him to get his dinner at the nearest restaurant, 
and then come back here.” 

When Maria returned she found La Faustin with 
her elbows on her knees, her spirited head buried in 
her two hands, and in this attitude she was drinking 
in, so to speak, the sonorous music that fell from the 
lips of the old man. 

Occasionally she rose from her seat, and with a sign 
to Athanassiades to continue, she walked up and down 
the room acting the lines. A word or two of French 
from him had told her which they were ; then quietly 
gliding to her place she continued to listen as before. 

And Athanassiades having reached the accusation 
of Phèdre against her stepson, laid down the book and 
began to explain to the two women with an intuition 
and intelligence that surprised the actress, this vast 
conception of Fate which is so grand and yet so human. 
He presented in Phèdre an entirely different person 
from the conventional, sympathetic woman depicted by 
the poet of the Court of Louis XIV., and the commen- 
tator gave to the modern tragedienne new ideas to 
introduce into her rôle. The reading was over. It 
was eight o’clock. 

La Faustin rose, and having discreetly wrapped 
several gold pieces in paper, she said with the air 
and tone of a very great lady : 

“Professor, we have taken many hours of your 
precious time. I beg you to accept this small compen- 
sation.” 

“No, Madame,” answered the old man; “in the 


58 


INSPIRATION. 


first place, you prepared my dinner for me, then I 
have made your acquaintance. I have often seen you 
play in the summer, when I am able to go out, and 
the Greeks — modern as well as ancient — owe } r ou a 
debt of gratitude for devoting your talents to the 
resurrection of the grand figures in their history. No, 
dear Madame, it is quite impossible. 

And the old man pronounced these words in his 
quavering voice which trembled with emotion, while 
his substitution of ze for ch , lent an almost childish 
sweetness to his intonation. 

“ I am very much of your opinion, my dear Sir, I do 
not think that the pleasure of this evening can be paid 
for with money,” said the actress. “I should prefer 
too to remember you in a different way. I should like 
to feel that you wanted a thing which only I could give 
you. What shall that thing be?” 

“ As you are so kind, Madame, to an old man, I will 
admit that there is one thing, a product of my own 
country, that I cannot procure, and I should like to 
taste once more before I die — honey from Hymettus ; 
perhaps, Madame, you might be able through the 
Embassy — 

“The Minister Plenipotentiary from France to 
Greece happens to be an especial friend of mine, and 
I am inclined to believe that there will be in the next 
bag of despatches from the Embassy a jar of Hymet- 
tus honey, the very best the bees of your dear land can 
make, and now Monsieur Athanassiades, once more 
farewell.” 


INSPIRATION. 


59 


“ He is absolutely pathetic, that poor old man ! ” 
said La Faustin as she took her seat in her carriage 
by the side of her sister. “ At all events our time has 
not been wasted ; it seems to me that the mists which 
have shrouded my rôle, have this night been swept 
away.” 

A long silence followed, broken at last by La Faus- 
tin, who uttered the following sentences in a staccato 
sort of way : 

“But this rôle — this role which the most impas- 
sioned actresses have trembled to assail — this rôle — to 
play it, my heart ought not to be so cold and empty as 
it is. I ought to love with passionate frenzy — with the 
heart, the senses, and the head.” 

“Juliette, I offer you a subject for your adoration 
— yes, a lover ! ” 

“La Faustin did not notice what her sister said, 
and continued : 

“Do you understand? Do you remember that he 
left me, loving me as he did — for he loved me like a 
madman — he left me swearing that within two months 
he would abandon career, family, and country, to live 
eternally with me, and not one line have I had from 
him, not one thing have I heard of him since he left 
me. To- all my letters not one has come in reply.” 

“ Do you still write to him ? ” 

“ Yes, on those days when I am desperately sad.” 

“You may be sure, Juliette, that the mail bags have 
become so heavy with the weight of your melan- 
choly that they could not be transported ! ” 


60 


INSPIRATION. 


La Faustin made no reply, and as they drove 
through the dark streets, her sad face shaded by 
the black lace of her hat could not be seen. 

“ You are coming to supper with me,” said Maria, 
as the carriage stopped at the house. 

“No!” 

“ Then I shall go to your house to supper ! ” 

“ No ! I must be alone to-night.” 


STUDY. 


61 


CHAPTER IV. 


STUDY 


0 



create a rôle — that is to say, to give the exterior 


X life of the soul, to give the physiognomy and the 
gestures, to give a voice to a person in print, a body of 
paper — is a somewhat onerous task. 

First came a serious reading, a reading which had a 
curious side to it, at Faustin’s. She performed her 
task mechanically and the sense of what she read did 
not seem to reach her brain. Then began the real 
study, followed by profound discouragement and depres- 
sion, feelings common to every great genius and which 
makes them say : 

“ No. I never can play that part* never ! ” 

Listen to the confidence made to a friend of mine at 
such a moment by one of our bravest actresses : 

“You may not understand me, but I have times of 
abject fear, sensations of terror that I cannot control, 
when I hope and wait, expecting an earthquake or some 
convulsion of Nature which may deliver me from my 
anguish. I curse the author, myself, and all creation, 
and become utterly stupid until all at once I see a 
gleam of light athwart this chaos.” 

And La Faustin had, moreover, to struggle against a 


62 


STUDY. 


most tormenting and treacherous memory, and the role 
of Phddre, it will be remembered, is a rôle of seven 
hundred verses. 

Notwithstanding all this, the part had taken full 
possession of her, and almost unconsciously the actress 
entered on her work, giving to it her nights as well as 
her days. 

Then followed that which takes place in the brain 
of a writer — the creation of an embryo, its develop- 
ment and the final birth of a living, sentient being — 
the actress felt all this going on in her mind, she felt it 
in her person as well. She ceased to be herself, and 
was overjoyed at her consciousness of being other than 
herself. A new woman created by her brain, entered 
into her body and drove away its original possessor. 

And here I cannot resist the temptation of giving 
another extract from the letter which I have previously 
quoted, in relation to this sense of double existence : 

“ From the day when a rôle is entrusted to me we 
live together. I may even say that it possesses and 
inhabits me, so to speak. I do not give m3 T self up to 
it half as much as it takes possession of me. Some- 
times it even happens that I acquire new tones in my 
voice, and a different expression of face and, in gen- 
eral effect, I am that which I wish to become, but all 
this is totally unintentional and involuntary. Impres- 
sionable as I am in such cases, I can never be gay when 
my other self is a prey to remorse or grief, any more 
than I can be depressed when my other self laughs in 
my ear. 


fe T U D Y . 


63 


“ Do you understand me ? I am, in fact, at such 
times two persons. This is the true secret of my work. 
I think and I live my part. It has been lived when I 
abandon it to the public.” 

Curiously enough too, tragedians, be they actors or 
actresses have none of the assistance which comedians 
or the personators of modern dramas acquire from 
contemporaneous models. 

The anger of Achilles and the love of Phèdre are 
not the anger and the love one elbows in our streets or 
in our salons. The imagination of these artists must 
therefore be uplifted to the sublime which borders 
closely on the supernatural, and attains by extraordi- 
nary intuition the conception of those human senti- 
ments which they are commanded to make real and 
visible. 

And who are these people who are expected to do 
this? Women like Faustin, who are totally without 
education, who are in absolute ignorance of the epochs 
that they represent, of the history of the heroines, and 
of the great Queens whom they personate. Women 
who say to the friend who hears them recite their part, 
“tell me, who was this Mr. Theseus?” and who do 
not even hear the reply. 

And these, nevertheless, are the women who re-create 
this humanity in a manner so delusive, with such 
tones, attitudes and gestures such as only the culti- 
vated men of literature, the painters and sculptors of 
antiquity can imagine. 


64 


STUDY. 


Ask these persons how such a miracle was effected? 
They will answer with one word, “ Instinct, instinct ! ” 

And this is, in fact, the only possible explanation of 
this faculty of somnambulism, this insight into the 
great Past. 

From the form of the actress, already imbued with 
her rôle, rises spontaneously, and in an entirely natural 
fashion, grand and beautiful gestures, the imposing 
attitudes of antique statues which have not been 
studied in a mirror, so entirely persuaded is the true 
actress that she has within herself the impulses which 
lead her to express herself justly. 

The mirror, according to the expression of a great 
artist who has retired from the Theatre, is the resource 
of those who have no natural instincts and who are 
obliged to experiment as to the artificial means of 
producing an effect which they never feel. 

The translating of the movements of the soul into 
pantomime is always a difficult thing to do. Where 
taste and art are best demonstrated is in the choice 
of gestures and passionate movements, which must be 
smoothed and tranquilized into the happy medium ; 
this is what the old stage directions mean, when they 
order certain parts to be played with “ the hands in 
the pocket.” 

Serenity is the character of perfect scenic creations, 
the ideal of which is to place on the boards a figure 
whose dramatic life, like a picture by an old master, 
detaches itself from its subdued colors only in a few 
high lights. 


STUDY. 


65 


But after all, it is possible that the greatest difficulty 
in a rôle, is that the voice of an actor should be in 
accord with the sentiment expressed by an author, the 
exact vocalization of which must be rendered in 
accordance with the dramatic intention. 

La Faustin spared no pains to attain this perfection. 
She exercised her voice in every possible manner. She 
spoke with excessive rapidity and then with great slow- 
ness, with a hundred different modulations, and this 
she did over and over again. 

One day — an afternoon in the race week, when the 
actress had taken little Luzy in her coupé, she repeated, 
“ He, my joy, my honor, my glory ! ” a phrase from 
Scribe’s Czarina, which she was to play at a matineé in 
the Faubourg Saint Germain. She repeated this 
phrase for an hour and a half, until she got just the 
intonation demanded by her ear. 

4 


66 


DISSATISFACTION. 


CHAPTER V. 


DISSATISFACTION 


“ ISTEN — both the father and the son — the son, 



XJ a very young man — were going to spend the 
evening with an old friend of the family. The son, 
however, who had a severe cold, refused to leave the 
corner of the fire.” 

Here the story was cut short by the sound of a door 
closing behind a clerk who whispered a word in the ear 
of the narrator, as he handed him a letter, which he 
signed on the corner of the mantel-shelf. 

“As I was saying, the son refused to leave the fire 
that night. On the staircase the father perceived that 
he had forgotten his handkerchief ; he turned back 
and asked his son to get him one from his sleeping- 
room. The father, in the meantime, seated himself in 
his son’s chair, and warmed his feet at the fire. 

“He glanced at first involuntarily and then with 
some little curiosity as to the manner in which his 
son intended to spend the evening, at the little table 
arranged for writing. 

“He saw an envelope bearing the mark ‘Pompes Fu- 
nèbres,' and by its side an open paper, with the estimate 
for funerals of each class, and an especial estimate of 
the amount which ought to be expended on the funeral 


DISSATISFACTION. 


67 


of a man occupying so high a financial position as the 
defunct ; the father could have no doubt, it was his own 
interment which was under consideration, and with the 
arrangements of which his far-seeing son proposed to 
cheer his lonely evenings ! The young man came 
back with the handkerchief. Ah ! had he been a son 
like ordinary sons — but no, this father said nothing — 
he left with a pleasant smile, went to his soirée, where 
he told his anecdote to his intimate friends with many 
witty details.” 

“ That is what I call true heroism,” said the listener 
to this story, removing his cigar as he spoke. 

“Yes, and he was the ideal broker,” answered Blan- 
cheron, “ he had thorough self-control and skepticism, 
which is our main strength at the Bourse.” 

Then after a few moments the broker added, “ and 
to think that a man of such admirable qualities died 
like a rabbit by a pistol ball behind the ear, on hearing 
the announcement of the marriage of a little girl whom 
he loved ! ” 

And thereupon Blancheron fell into a profound 
reverie. 

Blancheron was a man of considerable importance at 
the Bourse. His nature was energetic but prejudiced, 
which was evident in his face. There was also a cer- 
tain imperious decision characteristic of the man who 
makes money, which is not confined to the Jewish race. 
In his complexion was that underglow of metallic lus- 
tre, like gold beneath the skin, which is so curious to 
notice on the faces of these men of the Bourse. Blan- 


68 


DISSATISFACTION. 


cheron was over confident; that is to say, he had an 
insolent belief that Providence was with him, a happy 
predisposition of the brain to believe in the arrange- 
ment and success of events in this world, and at that 
time too everything succeeded in France. 

Clothed in the ample garments of an English farmer, 
this man professed for art and literature an almost 
brutal contempt which he extended to men of these 
professions, and in his whole existence which was given 
up to the making of money, he allowed himself but one 
distraction, and that was women. 

Luzy offered the strongest possible contrast to Blan- 
cheron. A handsome, slender little fellow, he was a 
musical dilettante and adored the society of artists and 
men of letters. He paid as little attention to business as 
was possible, and was as lazy as the lazzaroni. He had 
a yacht on the Mediterranean ; with it he would disap- 
pear from the Bourse for three months at a time, and 
in two successive years he had, by singular good luck, 
thus escaped the disasters which, as it happened, were 
crowded into three months of each year. Intelligent 
and adroit, Luzy however, had not the wonderful 
instinct of B lan cheron, nor }^et his marvellous imper- 
turbability, and therefore modestly contented himself 
with gravitating within the sphere of his friends’ opera- 
tions. Blancheron paced his cabinet with the heavy 
step of a sailor on his quarter-deck, walking with his 
legs a good way apart, and a short meerschaum between 
his teeth. He suddenly burst out with these words: 

“Upon my word, I think I am as strong as the old 


DISSATISFACTION. 


69 


father I have told you about, as you know I can bear 
all kinds of suffering, physical and mental, with more 
than ordinary fortitude — tell me then if you please, 
how it happens that a word or a look from this con- 
founded woman gives me more pain than a surgeon’s 
knife ever did ! Yes, my friend, strong and materialis- 
tic as I am — for you will admit that I am not especially 
nervous ” — and he laughed disdainfully, — “ I tell you I 
suffer intensely from even the way in which Juliette 
opens the door. Her very step is unlike the step of 
any other woman, and tells me all sorts of melancholy 
things. Ah ! this Phèdre ! this rôle has awakëned in 
her a host of poetical sentiments amid which my pro- 
saic self — ” 

As he went and came, uttering these phrases of rude 
lamentation, Blancheron continued to give orders 
through the open door for the battle of the day : 

“Have they the sixty thousand for Templen?” 

“ It is at 70-75, is it? Then buy me ninety thousand 
at once.” 

And being greatly disturbed in his mind, Blancheron 
spoke very roughly to a young clerk, and called him a 
blundering fool. Then going back to Luzy, he con- 
tinued : 

“No, you have no idea until you have tried it, of the 
state of mind into which a woman of this kind can 
throw a man. You will please remember that she never 
had any deep affection for me. I have always known 
this — nor did she ever make any pretense to such. But 
she belonged to me — she was mine, and through habit, 


70 


DISSATISFACTION. 


for our interests had been one for years, and through 
the control that a woman is always proud of exer- 
cising over a man, particularly a man like myself. 

“ There is the devil to pay when a woman’s old love 
revives within her, and every day I feel that she is far- 
ther away from me than ever. If it were more money 
that she wanted, it would be easy enough to get it for 
her, but against this phantom of the Past, against this 
William Ray ne, whose very existence she is not sure 
of, what can I do ? ” 

“ This state of things will not last long,” said Luzy, 
“it is only the affair of a month. When Phèdre is 
played — the actress will settle down into the bour- 
geois once more, and you will find Juliette again. 
You see her every day, just the same, do you not?” 

“ Yes, I see her just the same,” answered Blancheron 
gravely ; “ but her feelings toward me are like those of 
a good woman who tries to love her husband, and that 
is not in the least what I want ! ” 


AT REHEARSAL. 


71 


CHAPTER VI. 

AT REHEARSAL. 

T HE whole house was draped in linen coverings ; 

the darkness was profound, only broken by small 
squares of fire produced by the light of day coming 
through the red curtains of the windows in the third 
loges , and the gleam of the crystal chandeliers that 
looked like a mass of icicles hanging from the edge 
of a glacier. This and a whitish pallor on the cary- 
atides of the proscenium boxes, and on the sleeve of a 
violinist whose arm projected over the railing of the 
black void of the orchestra, was all that could be seen 
in the empty house, where on the edge of the balcony 
a white cat was composedly taking a promenade. 

Upon the stage, lighted by two reflectors — it was 
nearly as obscure as the house — strange streaks of 
bluish light found their way from out of doors among 
the scaffolding, as does the moonlight around a church 
spire in process of construction. 

Men in overcoats and round hats, and women in 
shabby garments keeping their hands warm in old 
muffs, moved about in this shadowy place. 

And through the silence and emptiness of the great 
auditorium, on the roof of which fell the glowing 
sunlight, came the roar and jar of carriages passing 
through the street. 


72 


AT REHEARSAL. 


The Theâtre-Français, exercising a privilege which 
can only be granted to dramatic celebrities in the plays 
of their old répertoire, had accorded to the great 
actress of the Odéon their house for a dozen nights, 
and also the privilege of rehearsing there. 

This was the day of the first rehearsal of Phèdre. 

The traditional foot-warmers of Moliere’s mansion 
had been filled and brought to the actresses, who were 
seated in the Louis Quinze chairs already on the 
stage ready for the play of the evening. 

The Prompter took his stand on the left, at a little 
table on which a lamp was placed ; Davesne is by his 
side with his back to a long stick with a red velvet 
handle that hung on a nail between two of the flies. 
The Director is installed on the right on a sofa. 

At the back of the stage is placed an immense 
chimney piece of carved wood, needed for the evening's 
scene, and the Hippolyte of Racine, extremely hoarse 
and unhappy, with a big handkerchief muffled about 
his throat, was impatiently walking up and down, 
trying to keep warm. 

“ Well ! shall we begin ? Are you ready ? ” said the 
Director. 

At this moment one of the actors, detained by an 
attack of rheumatism, came limping on the stage, hold- 
ing his physician’s certificate open in his hand. 

“Well! are we all here now?” asked the Director, 
impatiently. 

“No,” said some one, “Œnone is still missing.” 

“ Upon my word, this is insupportable Î It is get- 


AT REHEARSAL. 


73 


ting worse and worse! We will begin, nevertheless, 
she will be here, I presume, in a minute or two, 
particularly as she is already a half hour late.” 

The rehearsal therefore began in the dim, gray light 
which was almost like a fog on the stage, only a white 
line — that of the linen collars worn by the actors — was 
to be seen, and the actresses played with their faces 
in shadow and their hands in the light. 

“ Scene II., Monsieur Davesne ? ” said the Director’s 
voice. 

And while the prompter read aloud the lines : 

“ Hélas! Seigneur, quel trouble au mien peut être égal ? 

La reine touche presque à son terme fatal. 

En vain à l’observer jour et nuit je m’attache;” 

Old Davesne with his white beard, his green vest and 
yellow pantaloons well strapped under his shoes, listens 
modestly to the confidante’s recital of Hippolyte. 

“ There she comes ! There she comes ! ” cried some 
one in the coulisse. 

“ Oh ! such a coachman as I had ! Believe me, my 
children, it is never wise to take a fiacre driven by an 
old man ! ” exclaimed Œnone, a type of the theatrical 
liar. She unfastened the strings of her hat as she 
spoke, and turning to Faustin gave her the replies of 
Scene III. 

It is a very curious thing to watch in artists, even 
those of the greatest talent and celebrity, the birth of 
a new rôle. It is really droll to see the almost childish 
way in which they begin to recite this rôle, the care 
and stiffness of each gesture, and how it is only by the 


74 


AT REHEARSAL. 


slowest possible infiltration that the creation of the 
author fills them and finally overflows, but only at last 
in an outburst of genius. Mademoiselle Mars said, 
in words more graphic than polished, “ I have not 
vomited this rôle,” and this is what she meant. 

This was her graphic way of saying that she needed 
time, work, and an infinite amount of groping in the 
dark as it were, before reaching the perfection of her 
ideal. 

And this perpetual struggle in the brain, this uneasy 
restlessness up to the day of the first representation 
imparts to women a nervousness which induces them 
to adopt a manner of exaggerated humility, while all 
the time they are fully conscious of a desire to express 
an angry and haughty rebellion. 

It was thus that La Faustin, in reply to an observa- 
tion addressed to her by the director, said with a con- 
descension that amazed him — 

“ Oh ! if that is your opinion, I am, of course, mis- 
taken ! ” 

But the voice in which she uttered this obsequious 
phrase was full of suppressed indignation. 

There is still another peculiarity to be noticed 
among actresses while they are thus studying and incu- 
bating, if we may be allowed the expression — a new 
rôle, and especially during the wearisome and trying 
labor of the rehearsals ; they are enveloped in an atmos- 
phere of austerity and coldness which seems almost to 
have unsexed them. 

They seem to have laid aside the amiable graces 


AT REHEARSAL. 


75 


of their nature which, as a rule, they bring to all the 
things of life ; they positively have not even a smile for 
any one. 

“ That won’t do ! — it won’t do at all ! ” cried the 
director, rubbing his thighs as he spoke, in a most vig- 
orous manner.” 

“For the love of heaven, gentlemen and ladies, 
throw a little more energy into your parts.” 

It was one of those days of which there are many in 
our strange Parisian climate, when all the energy and 
life seems to go out of one, when the mind is dull, the 
thoughts and the head alike heavy, when in short it 
seems impossible to throw off the incapacity for exer- 
tion that weighs ope down. 

The rehearsal still continued to move slowly on, 
La Faustin stopped at almost every sentence, feeling 
that her lips were stiff and dry, and Hippolyte com- 
plained that he had a shocking cold, Theramene inter- 
spersed his lines with dolorous sighs, the prompter 
fell asleep, and through all these interruptions to Ra- 
cine’s play was heard the noise made by the lamp- 
cleaner as he washed the hanging crystals of the 
chandeliers, which sounded as he touched them like 
the jewels on the neck of a fair waltzer. The white 
cat was by this time quite tired of her promenade on 
the edge of the balcony, and had gone to sleep on the 
arm of one of the machinists who had curled himself 
up in a corner, and was himself sound asleep. 

“ This is all bad — thoroughly bad ! ” said the direc- 
tor, rising impatiently from his sofa. “No, it is not 


76 


AT REHEARSAL. 


worth while to waste any more time this morning. 
Everybody seems to be utterly lazy. There is nothing 
to he done but wait until another day.” 

And the rehearsal was abandoned. La Faustin with 
lier eyes half blinded by the mingled daylight and gas- 
light, in which she had been trying to see, went out on 
the Palais Royale, and stood there a moment in that 
sort of maze which comes to you when you leave one of 
these dark places, and makes you wonder if you are in 
real daylight or in the daylight of a dream. 


TRIBUTES. 77 


CHAPTER VII. 

TRIBUTES. 

cc TS my sister up?” asked Maria, one morning of 

X the woman who was J uliette’s factotum. 

“No, not yet. Madame is reading the Journals. 
Madame has never, I believe, had so many notices. It 
is because of yesterday’s benefit, I suppose.” 

“ Ah ! my good Guenagaud, my sister is fortunate 
to have in her service a woman like you. As to my 
servant, I was obliged to show her the door, you know. 
She was about to become a mother, and I discovered 
that she was in the habit of receiving ten francs from 
the tradespeople for telling them when money came 
into the house ; and yet the creature was saucy to me 
when I gave her her week’s warning. And how are 
you, Guenagaud ? ” 

“ My health is good enough,” answered Guenagaud, 
coldly. The woman was always on her guard against 
the amiabilities of the sister of her mistress. Guena- 
gaud was a woman of fifty, square and masculine in 
appearance, who, under the spectacles she always wore, 
exhibited the features of a country attorney, sur- 
rounded by a linen cap. Guenagaud, in spite of her 
physiognomy, which was so precisely that of a man 
of the law, sketched by Daumier, was attached to the 



78 


TRIBUTES. 


interests of her mistress by something of that religious 
worship which certain natures among the lower classes 
feel for masters who live enveloped in glory. 

“ I suppose I may be allowed to enter ? ” 

Guenagaud bowed an assent and opened the door. 
La Faustin was still in her bed, which was covered 
with all the daily theatrical journals. They were all 
open and still smelt of printer’s ink. They had been 
piled together after she had read them, and had 
slowty slipped down the fine Holland sheets until they 
fell upon the floor with a rustle like dead leaves. The 
actress, with her head raised on two pillows, her brown 
hair floating over her shoulders, lay smiling and happy. 
Her knees were raised and made a sort of desk which 
supported more newspapers, and in the exertions she 
had made to cut the journals with her impatient fore- 
finger, the button on her shoulder had broken, and 
the chemise falling down, allowed one white shoulder 
to be seen. 

“You, at this early hour ! What has brought you? ” 
“ I am going to tell you. And about the newspapers, 
are you pleased with your Journalists to-day ? ” 

“ They are most delightful. One is more flattering 
than the other. They make me very proud by prophe- 
sying great things in my Phèdre. But tell me what 
you came for ? ” 

“We give, the day after to-morrow, a great dinner — 
a business dinner, you understand. You know there 
is to be an adaptation of Carsonac’s last play for 
Vienna. You know the play; it is new and it is good 


TRIBUTES. 


79 


and will be a great success there. But you know a 
little diplomatic management, a little oiling of the 
machine, never does any harm. But I have a favor 
to ask of you. You know very well that your presence 
is essential to the success of the dinner. You know 
that though he is not over fond of you, he attaches 
great importance to having you. But of whom is he 
fond, except myself? Ah! I see something new, I 
hope it is worthy of you.” 

And Maria went up to a writing desk on which lay 
a golden branch — a branch of laurel, bearing on each 
of its leaves the name of a rôle, and on the stalk this 
inscription : 

“ Theatre-Francaise de Rouen. 

To JULIETTE FAUSTIN, 

FROM HER ADMIRERS.” 

“ Yes, something of this kind comes every day to 
me. You know during the summer vacation I played 
in a number of these towns. But really, Maria, are 
you so very anxious that I should come to your din- 
ner ? The truth is, my dear, I do not like the people 
I meet at your house ” 

“Nor do I! But you can ask whomever you 
please. I need not tell you that my invitation, of 
course includes Blancheron.” 

“Ah! he will not come, not he! He declares that 
yours is one of those houses in Paris where a man is 
always made ill by his dinner. 

“But it is not really so bad as that, Juliette.”' 


80 


TRIBUTES. 


“You know he has peculiar ideas about food, and 
he rarely eats a dinner that is not ordered by him- 
self. But the truth is, I am engaged at a dinner that 
same day, which he gives to one of his friends. You 
know him — little Luzy — you met him at Sainte-Adresse 
— then there was to be a party to the Theatre. Pshaw ! 
they may go alone, and I will come to you as earl} 
as possible. And is your dear Carsonac quite as 
unamiable as usual ? ” 

“I don’t suppose he can help his bad temper. You 
know he is threatened with a nervous affection, and 
his back is always raw, a Russian treatment, and the 
poor fellow sometimes does not get an hour’s sleep in 
a night. He passes the whole night, sometimes, walking 
about the room like a tiger in a cage. He smokes and 
he drinks brandy at such times. I don’t think that 
such a life as that disposes one to Christian charity ! I 
should not be in the least surprised if all at once soft- 
ening of the brain should set in and he should become 
a hopeless imbecile. And do you know, he fears this 
himself; the doctors have told him something of the 
kind. Well ! you promise, do you not, to come in the 
evening? I shall depend upon you. How lovely you 
look, this morning ! ” 

And Maria kissed her sister’s shoulder. “ Your skin 
is like satin,” she murmured, but La Faustin cut short 
her raptures. 

“There — that will do — you know I hate such 
things I ” 


A DINNER. 


81 


CHAPTER VIII, 


A DINNER 



T ten o’clock La Faustin reached her sister’s 


II house, and dinner was not over. While she 
laid aside her wraps, she heard loud voices, and when 
she entered the dining-room her sister, with her face 
flushed with anger and champagne, was standing with 
her hands on the table, and hurling at her lover across 
twenty-five guests, the words: 

“ You are a miserable fool ! ” 

Then she threw her arms above her head and 
shivered from head to foot. 

The battalion of friends, Moumoute at the head, 
lifted Maria from the floor and carried her to her 
dressing-room ; from whence came little shrieks and 
sobs, stifled exclamations, followed by torrents of 
tears. 

“ Lillette, what on earth is the matter?” asked La 
Faustin, as the young girl passed her. 

“The matter is just what it always is. During the 
first course Bonne-Ame was in the wildest state of 
gayety. In the second, she made e}*es at all the men. 
In the third, she quarreled with Carsonac, and of 
course with dessert came sobs and tears. That is the 
usual routine.” 


5 


82 


A DINNER. 


Carsonac, silent, cold and pale with anger sat with 
his head bowed over his plate, struggling to choke 
down his shame and his rage, then he rose and entered 
his smoking room, followed by most of his masculine 
friends. 

In the empty and brilliantly lighted salon was a 
woman with two little girls, almost children, who, 
for reasons best known to herself, had been sent 
there by their mother, one of the women present had 
however taken them from the dining room to spare 
them the disgraceful scene that had just taken place. 
This woman was a good natured creature and was now 
fully occupied with her little companions, and a hearty 
game of romps. 

Several of the men, guests at the dinner, still lin- 
gered at the table drinking wine and talking. 

The croupier from Monaco was conversing with 
the leader of an orchestra, the husband of Mou- 
moute, on the difficulty of raising starlings. The 
physician from the Baths of Hombourg, was as silent 
as a diplomat, and every ten minutes solemnly poured 
out for himself a petit verre , and also one for his 
neighbor, an actor who was insane on the subject of 
perfumes, and who usually kept his nose down as close 
to his vest as possible, in which he had ordered sewed 
between the lining and the outside, a number of Vanilla 
beans. A tall faded out fellow, whose position in the 
world consisted in having good men to work with him, 
was enumerating the domestic virtues of the wives of 
these men, to a musical composer who looked like a 


A DINNER. 


83 


maniac under a most remarkable wig. The Viennese 
adapter in whose honor the dinner was given was flat- 
tering the mother of a danseuse, who being almost a 
stranger to Maria had not felt at liberty to follow 
her to her dressing room. 

A Scandinavian, who thought he had written a play 
in French, was showing to a theatrical manager some 
rascally pictures in the back of his watch, while at the 
same time endeavoring to discover how much an 
author must pay for the glory of seeing his play put 
on the stage. And on the other side of this for- 
eigner was the principal creditor of this manager who, 
through a Huissier, seized every night the receipts of 
the house. 

In Carsonac’s private room the dramatic authors 
and business men were smoking contemplatively, and 
in a silence that seemed to indicate their conscious- 
ness of being surrounded by men who stole ideas. 

At the further end of this dimly lighted room two 
men were talking together in subdued voices. One of 
the two was utterly lost in the smoke that surrounded 
them, but at intervals he uttered, in a voice that seemed 
to come from the clouds, this sentence which he repeat- 
ed over and over again — 

“It isn’t so bad, but it must be cut.” 

Just as Carsonac, who had quietly gained possession 
of his hat, was about to slip away, he was joined by the 
manager. 

“There is nothing to be done with the Scandina- 
vian,” exclaimed the latter, “ he won’t give but twenty 
thousand francs.” 


84 


A DINNER. 


“You are an idiot! Take his manuscript and his 
twenty thousand francs. There will be all the cos- 
tumes and settings, which we can utilize in a play that 
I will write.” And Carsonac reached the ante room 
where he was again stopped by another friend. 

“ Carsonac ! ” said this man, “ I have an interest in 
an elephant just put on board a ship at Carthagena.” 

“Well, what is that to me ? ” 

“ Perhaps you could utilize him in the next play.” 

“ I really know nothing about the next play,” said 
Carsonac impatiently, and in his cold eyes there was 
an ominous gleam. 

La Faustin, after remaining with her sister for a few 
minutes, went back to the salon where the woman was 
still amusing her young companions. She was stand- 
ing on the divan in the centre of the room and would 
occasionally fall flat with the dying shriek of the fifth 
act; the two little girls watching this oft repeated 
gymnastic feat with shrieks of laughter. One of these 
children had soft dark eyes, and wore a white dress 
with a coral necklace. Her face had all the candor and 
purity that characterizes a girl who has lived retired 
from the world. She told Juliette how tenderly she 
loved a little lizard she had found on the convent wall. 
She carried him always in her bosom, and when she 
played the piano he put his head out to hear the music. 
A jealous companion crushed him, and with his little 
entrails hanging out, he had dragged himself to the 
feet of his friend to die. She had buried him in the 
garden and had erected a tomb on which she had placed 


A DINNER. 


85 


a cross. She did not want to go to mass — she had no 
more joy in her prayers. Her religion was over, for 
God was unjust. 

Bonne-Ame, now recovering from her nervous 
attack, put her head through her boudoir door to 
inspect the salon and see who was there. Her face 
was white, but it was with poudre de Riz. Then she 
ventured out and wandered through the rooms in an 
aimless sort of way. Her eyes were wild and her lips 
still quivered. Her exquisite profile, her delicate nose, 
her beautifully chiselled mouth and the capricious hair 
waving over her forehead, were all beautiful. A 
thorough creature of impulse, whose caprices some- 
times amounted almost to madness, she had reached 
that most depressing hour in the life of many 
women — in the life of all women like herself — when 
she had discovered her first wrinkle. 

Bonne-Ame, in whom the effects of champagne were 
now passing away, was doing her best to drown this 
intrusive recollection by calling all the men about her, 
but in the ironical speeches which she showered upon 
them there was a certain intonation of sadness, and 
in the tender phrases she addressed to one of these 
men was a harshness which turned them into a joke, 
while the cynical words she uttered to another were 
spoken in the quavering voice of a child that had been 
whipped for her naughtiness. 

Suddenly, sitting as she was in a deep arm-chair, 
with her little feet rosy through their white silk stock- 
ings, outstretched before her, she uttered a peculiar 


86 


A DINNER. 


shriek of laughter — a shriek which always announced 
to her especial friends the execution of a lover, which 
she usually preferred to perforin in public. 

“You know Gargouillard ? ” she asked. 

Gargouillard, having received this name from Maria, 
was her last lover. 

“Have you seen him,” she continued, “since he 
broke a front tooth? You don’t know how odd the 
effect is.” Then with a laugh, she added, “ He writes 
well, though. He uses delightfully long words.” 

Bonne-Ame pulled out of her pocket two or three 
notes which she kissed noisily, with many gestures and 
sighs, which were quite amusing. 

“You know his punctuality is his strong point, and 
he writes : ‘ I shall be with you at twenty-three min- 
utes of seven ; ’ and in this other note, 4 at seventeen 
minutes after nine.’ I never saw anything so stupid 
as his face when he gazes at me, and I declare if it 
were summer I would set him to catching cockchafers 
in a box. I don’t think I am calculated to get on 
with sentimental men. I told him, too, how jealous 
Carsonac was,” and here Bonne-Ame laughed ner- 
vously. “ I forgot to warn Carsonac, and he invited 
him to dinner. I suppose we shall keep him a month 
like any other servant ! ” 

In the cabinet of the master of the house the 
dramatic authors continued to smoke in Oriental 
silence. 

“But what has become of Carsonac?” said one of 
them at last. 


A PINNER. 


87 


“ Carsonac ! He went to look after the evening’s 
receipts. He always takes a little walk after dinner. 
Ah! how much, four thousand five hundred ?” added 
the speaker, as Carsonac entered the room. 

“ No; the receipts were very low to-night,” answered 
Carsonac, with a preoccupied air. “ But my sister-in- 
law is not with you. Where the deuce is she? ” 

“ She is in the Salon ; she has spent all the evening 
with the children.” 

Carsonac went to La Faustin and brought her into 
the cabinet, saying, as he did so : 

“ Bonne-Ame has not presented to you that little 
Blainville, I hear. Lazy little creature, she never 
takes the smallest trouble in her own house. But let 
me place the situation before you. We do not want 
la Marescot ; she has no magnetism ; but she is sustained 
by Marville and the others, and more especially by 
the Minister, whom she has fascinated. He wishes us 
to take the part from Blanche Tonnerieux. You see 
the state of embarrassment we are in — so I invited 
little Blainville to meet you, knowing that he adored 
you and that he has the ear of His Excellency. They 
say, in fact, that he is a natural son of the Minister. 
Now, what I want you to do is to let this boy make 
love to you ; it will do you no harm, and may do us a 
vast deal of good.” And presenting the young man 
to La Faustin, he made room for them on the divan 
and listened to their conversation without appearing 
to do so. 

Some minutes later the last cigar expired on the lips 
of the last smoker. Then the other men gave some 


88 


A DINNER. 


small indications of life. They yawned and dropped a 
few monosyllables. One of them rose, and in order to 
stretch his legs began to pace the room. 

“ But you step, my dear fellow, you step ,” said one 
of the dramatic authors. 

First Dramatic Author — “ What on earth do you 
mean ? Of course I step.” 

Second Dramatic Author — “I mean to describe the 
peculiar walk of people who are beginning to be 
attacked by a weakness in the spinal column. Oh! 
you are still in the first stages.” 

Third Dramatic Author — “That reminds me that 
my boot-maker, who, by the way, looks a little like a 
death’s head, pointed out to me, the last time I paid his 
bill, that I wore my boots out on the end of the soles. 
Could that be a symptom of the disease to which you 
allude? I confess that I did not like the man’s smile 
as he spoke about it.” 

Fourth Dramatic Author — “ I think I will examine 
m} r boots.” 

Fifth Dramatic Author — “ Do any of you ever expe- 
rience a strange sensation when you are walking on 
a hard pavement, do you ever feel as if a soft carpet 
were under your feet ? ” 

Sixth Dramatic Author — “ No, I never felt that, but 
sometimes my nerves feel like the ropes on which pup- 
pets dance, all stretched tight. Then, too, there is a 
queer feeling in the back of my neck that I cannot 
define. In my bed, as I lie there, I am not quite sure 
where my legs are. Suppose it were the beginning 
of the end, Carsomic?” 


A DINNER. 


89 


“Well, it would not trouble me!” answered that 
individual, with a wicked smile. He had been passing 
his hands over his legs during all this conversation, as 
if he felt in them all the phenomena described by his 
friends. 

And each one of these men began to question each 
other, and like children who sing in the darkness to 
drive away their fears, related the various symptoms 
of that malady which is the terror, the fixed thought 
and after dinner conversation, of this class of men 
whose brains are overwrought and who are constantly 
assailed by sensual temptations. Medical phrases were 
familiar to their lips, they talked of apoplexy and of 
the epileptic vibration of the muscles of the face — 
words and phrases, in short, which sounded in the ear 
like the tolling of funeral bells, and which imparted 
to this little festivity the air of a medical consultation 
or of a lecture over a subject laid on the dissecting 
table. 

“Thanks, gentlemen, I am going away,” said La 
Faustin, coldly, when she had performed the task 
assigned to her. “ You are much too dismal for me ! ” 

In the dining-room La Faustin found her sister 
before a mirror arranging a Spanish scarf coquettishly 
on her head. Maria turned to Juliette, and said : 

“Rosaline wants to see you, very much. She wants 
to consult you in regard to a change in her entreé in 
the Fifth Act. You would not refuse to oblige her, I 
am sure. Here, take this cloak.” 

And the two women went out together. 


90 


A SCRAP OF PAPER. 


CHAPTER IX. 

A SCRAP OF PAPER. 

I N this house, which reminded one of Hoffman’s 
story of Loge No. 23, there was a long corridor, at 
the end of which was a door that Bonne-Ame opened 
with a key which she took from her pocket. Passing 
through they at once found themselves within the 
theatre. They saw women wrapped around with the 
curtains of their dressing rooms talking to their 
adorers or coming out all dressed for their parts. 
Rosaline was still on the stage, and in her empty dress- 
ing room there was only Maria’s little boy. 

Profiting by the absence of the actress and her 
dresser, the child had seated herself at the dressing- 
table, and surrounded by a sponge dipped in lily-white, 
by the hare’s foot, the rouge pot, the pencil for the 
eyebrows, he was slowly and conscientiously making 
himself up as an old man, and after each successful 
stroke of the brush, he took a sip from a glass into 
which he had poured a half bottle of gooseberry syrup. 

“What! Can I believe my eyes! You here at this 
hour?” exclaimed his mother pushing him back in his 
chair and wiping his face roughly with her handker- 
chief. 

“Victorine!” she cried to a servant who was 


A 8 C H A P OF PAPER. 


91 


passing, “ take this bad boy and carry him to Zélie and 
bid her put him to bed instantly. It seems to me,” 
added Bonne-Ame, looking at her watch, “that the 
tableau lasts much longer than usual. I will leave 
you here a moment, J uliette, and go to meet Rosaline.” 

La Faustin was that day very much out of spirits. 
She sank on the shabby sofa, and stupefied by the 
heat of the tiny room, the close air and poisonous odors, 
she heard the following words said at some little dis- 
tance by a tall thin creature standing at the open door 
of one of the dressing rooms : 

“Yes indeed,” the woman said, “from eight to five 
o’clock I sit in the work room sewing on the costume, 
and from six to one o’clock in the morning I am here 
as dresser. And for all this I receive forty francs per 
month. I say I receive it, which is far from being the 
case, for I have not had a cent for a month, and I have 
swallowed nothing to-day but my café au laits which 
is not quite enough to give me the heart to put these 
dainty creatures into their velvets and silks.” 

While La Faustin unconsciously heard these words, 
her sleepy eyes took in the contents of the loge — the tiny 
stove of white porcelain, the pine dressing table painted 
black, the blazing gas burners on either side of the 
mirror, in the frame of which was stuck four cards, 
cupids with swollen faces, like those of the Cardinal 
winds in old almanacs — under these figures were the 
words Happiness, Success, Health, Fortune. 

And through the half open door came the sound of 
footsteps hurrying past and a distant murmur, which 


92 


A SCRAP OF PAPER. 


seemed to the actress no more than an automatic 
agitation, or the movement in an insane asylum, where 
the most incomprehensible things were done with a 
reasonable air. 

La Faustin determined to shake off the lethargy to • 
which she had succumbed with this nightmare of 
words and visions. She made a tremendous effort, and 
reaching out her arm took up a bit of paper that lay on 
the sofa beside her. It was a half-sheet of a newspa- 
per — she began to read it. 

The paper was published in the language she had 
learned in Scotland amid kisses that closed her lips 
when she mispronounced the words. 

La Faustin started to her feet, as if suddenly 
awakened — she looked hastily around the loge, then 
she began to examine each corner, and finally, with 
a nervous strength which could not have been ex- 
pected from so frail a looking creature, she began to 
move all the furniture. The sofa was fastened to the 
wall ; she took some matches and lying on the floor, 
by the light of these matches, which she sheltered in 
the hollow of her hand, she disturbed all the lint and 
spider’s webs under the couch. 

“Are you mad? What on earth are you doing?” 
said her sister, surprising her in this attitude, when she 
returned followed by Rosaline and her dresser ? ” 

La Faustin bounded to her feet and hurled these 
words at Rosaline : 

“Whence came this paper?” 

“ That paper ? I am sure I don’t know. Ah ! yes, 


A SCRAP OF PAPER. 


93 


I do. It was an English paper in which a silk knitted 
vest was wrapped. Yon know the vests I mean — they 
are as fine as a spider’s web — they both came from 
London two or three days ago.” 

“ But the name of the journal — what was the name ? 
And the date ? You surely remember the date ? Is 
the paper a new one, or is it a year old ? Ah ! it is 
dreadful to hear things and not know when they took 
place. And even this little bit has a piece taken out.” 

Turning to the dresser, Juliette said : 

“ I will give you two Louis if you will find the 
missing piece — you see what I mean.” 

“ Good Heavens ! Two Louis, Madame ! ” said the 
woman in despair and amazement. “ And to think 
that I lighted the fire with it ! ” 

“But what is there in that newspaper which is so 
very interesting ? ” said Maria. 

“ Nothing — nothing at all. Another time I will tell 
you. You will give me that bit of paper, Rosaline, 
will you not? ” 

And without waiting for any reply La Faustin left 
the Theatre and rushed down the steps. There, feel- 
ing herself alone, she stood under a street lamp and 
studied the torn bit of paper, which, after William’s 
name, gave the first initial of a family name, which 
suggested that of her former love. 

Then La Faustin beckoned to her coachman to 
follow her, and she walked along the black Quai with 
that strange step with which women walk to the Seine 
with the intention of throwing themselves into the 


94 


A SCRAP OF PAPER. 


dark, rolling river. Her strange manner attracted the 
attention of the few persons whom she met, and under 
each gaslight she stopped to read once more that enig- 
matical, bewildering scrap of paper, believing each 
time that she should succeed in tearing the secret 
from it. 

“ But I am mad to-night,” she suddenly exclaimed. 
“ It is such a simple thing to find out what I want to 
know,” and she hurried into her carriage and ordered 
the coachman to drive at full speed. 

As soon as she reached her rooms, La Faustin seated 
herself at her desk and wrote a letter. Then she 
hastily undressed, and when undressed, instead of 
going to bed, began to walk up and down her room. 
She did this for a long time — a much longer time than 
she thought. 

During the night La Faustin dreamed of the article 
she had read. A tiger hunt given by the Viceroy of 
India, a hunt in which some one was wounded whose 
concealed face she knew to be that of William Ray ne. 

The next morning when Guenagaud had lighted the 
fire in the room of her mistress, she stood still and 
spelled out the following address : “ To the Secretary 
of the English Legation.” “Ah! she must want that 
letter posted ! Madame, do you want me to take that 
letter ? ” 

La Faustin lifted herself from her pillows and sat 
for several minutes in silent thought. Then she said 
to her servant : 

“Throw that letter in the fire, and also the piece of 
a newspaper folded beside it ! ” 


95 


A SCRAP OF PAPKR. 

Then throwing herself back on her pillow, she said, 
addressing the ceiling: “No, I do not wish to know; 
I am afraid. I prefer to remain in ignorance — at least 
I can hope now.” 

But after that day when she did not wish to know, 
the imagination of La Faustin never depicted William 
except in the jangles of India with his white English 
flesh torn by ferocious jaws. 


96 


PHÈDRE. 


CHAPTER X. 

PHÈDRE. 

“ VTTE will try again the great love scene in the 

V T second act,” said the Director, at the end of 
the third rehearsal. 

The Actress , — 

Le voici — 

The Stage Manager . — “Very good, but I want you 
to bear in mind that you are afraid to see Hippolytus 
while at the same time } r ou are irresistibly drawn 
towards him by a superior force. This scene demands 
profound study. 

The Actress — 

Le voici : vers mon cœur tout mon sang se retire. 

J’oublie, en le voyant, ce que je viens lui dire. 

On dit qu’un prompt départ vous éloigne de nous, 

Seigneur. A vos douleurs je viens joindre mes larmes ; 

Je vous viens pour un fils expliquer mes alarmes. 

The Stage Manager — “ That is it — you have got just 
the right tone — the dash of feminine hypocrisy required 
by these verses. 

The Actress — 

Mon fils n’a plus de père. 

The Stage Manager — This is a most important phrase 


PHÈDRE. 97 

— “ My son has no longer a father ” and demands to be 
said with an undercurrent of meaning. 

The Actress — 

et le jour n’est pas loin 

Qui de ma mort encor doit le rendre témoin. 

Déjà mille ennemis attaquent son enfance : 

Vous seul ouvrez contre eux embrasser sa défense. 

Mais. ........ 

The Stage Manager — (Who has a habit of talking to 
himself and whom La Faustin never seems to notice), 
“ Here the voice should be dropped.” 

The Actress — 

Mais un secret remords agite mes esprits: 

Je crains d’avoir fermé votré oreille à ses cris. 

Je tremble que sur lui votre juste colère 
Ne poursuive bientôt une odieuse mère. 

“Now, Hippolytus — ” 

The Director who is standing on the steps which at 
rehearsals are placed from the Auditorium to the stage, 
strikes several blows on the steps with his cane, and 
says: 

“ Excuse me, but do you remember the effect pro- 
duced by Mademoiselle Clairon — the shudder that ran 
over her whole frame when the voice of Hippolytus 
strikes on her ear?” 

The Actress — 

Quand vous me haïriez — 

“No! Wait a moment — that is not it, I have it 
though ! ” And after angrily tugging at the basque of 
her corsage for a moment with both hands, La Faustin 
addressed the Stage Manager. “How should you 
render that ? ” 

6 


98 


PHÈDRE. 


The Stage Manager — “ I prefer not to say, I want 
you to say it yourself as I feel it — well then,” after 
pausing a moment, “say it in an every day tone — 
now a trifle more emphasis — Perfect ! ” 

The Director — “ It is only necessary to make a sug- 
gestion to you for you to surpass our own meaning.” 

The Actress — 

Quand vous me haïriez, je ne m’en plaindrais pas, 

Seigneur: vous m’avez vue attachée à vous nuire; 

Dans le fond de mon cœur — 

The Stage Manager — Give to, “ dans le fond de mon 
cœurf a little more emphasis, and then until the end of 
the couplet accentuate the rhythm. 

The Actress — 

Dans le fond de mon cœur vous ne pouviez pas lire. 

A votre inimitié j’ai pris soin de m’offrir: 

Aux bords que j’habitais je n’ai pu vous souffrir; 

En public, en secret, contre vous déclarée, 

J’ai voulu par des mers en être séparée, 

J’ai même défendu par une expresse loi, 

Qu’on osât prononcer votre nom devant moi. 

Si 

The Stage Manager — Drop your voice a little on 
that “ Si.” 

The Actress — 

Si pourtant à l’offense on mesure la peine, 

Si la haine peut seule attirer votre haine, 

Jamais femme 

The Stage Manager — “ One — Two-—” 

The Actress — 


ne fut plus digne de pitié, 
Et moins digne, seigneur, de votre inimitié. 


Ah! seigneur! que le ciel. 


PHÈDRE. 


99 


The Stage Manager — “Separate the word “ciel” a 
little from the others, and then give a tenderer 
intonation to what follows: 

The Actress — 

Ah! Seigneur! que le ciel, j’ose ici l’attester, 

De cette loi commune a voulu m’excepter! 

Qu’un soin bien différent me trouble et me dévore I 

“ Me dévore, me dévore, me dévore,” repeated La 
Faustin, who at the third attempt cried, “ Ah ! I have 
it, I think.” 

On ne voit pas deux fois le rivage des morts, 

Seigneur: puisque Thésée a vu les sombres bords, 

En vain vous espérez qu’un dieu vous le renvoie; 

Et l’avare Acheron ne lâche pas sa proie. 

Que dis-je! il n’est point mort puisqu’il respire en vous. 

Toujours devant mes yeux je crois voir mon époux: 

— Je le vois, je lui parle 

The Director — “ Good I Good ! Oh I that is really 
wonderful ! ” 

The Actress — 


et mon cœur.. je m’égare, 

Seigneur; ma folle ardeur malgré moi se déclaré. 

The Stage Manager — “Try again on that ‘malgré 
moi; ” 

The Actress — 

Oui, prince, je languis, je brûle pour Thésée: 

Je l’aime, non point tel que l’ont vu les enfers, 

Volage adorateur de mille objets divers, 

Qui va du dieu des morts déshonorer la couche; 

Mais fidèle, mais fier, et même un peu farouche, 
Charmant. . . . 

The Stage Manager — “ Capital ! Couldn’t be better î ” 
The Director — “ That is as good as anything Rachel 


100 


PHÈDRE. 


ever did, and she did well. In fact I think you say 
the words un peu farouche even better than she I’ 

The Actress — 

Charmant, jeune, traînant tous les cœurs après soi, 

Tel qu’on dépeint nos dieux, ou tel que je vous voi. 

The Stage Manager — “ A little more warmth in the 
tone there, and put yourself more in communication, 
if possible, with the man you love.” 

The Actress — 

Il avait votre port, vos yeux, votre langage; 

Cette noble pudeur colorait son visage, 

Lorsque de notre Crète il traversa les flots, 

Digne sujet des vœux des filles de Minos. 

Que faisiez-vous alors? Pourquoi, sans Hippolyte, 

Des héros de la Grèce assembla-t-il l’élite ? 

The Director — “Will you allow me to make one obser- 
vation here? Never allow the structure of these 
symmetrical verses to be lost sight of; it is two 
rhymed lines and two equal hemistiches.” 

The Actress — 

Pourquoi, trop jeune encor, ne pûtes-vous alors 
Entrer dans le vaisseau qui le mit sur nos bords ? 

Par vous aurait péri le monstre de la Crète, 

Malgré tous les détours de sa vaste retraite : 

“Go on,” said the prompter, for La Faustin hesi- 
tated. 

She resumed : 

Pour en développer l’embarras incertain, 

Ma sœur du fil fatal eût armé votre main. 

Mais non: dans ce dessein, je l’aurais devancée; 

L’amour m’en eût d’abord inspiré la pensée: 

C’est moi, prince, c’est moi dont l’utile secours 
Vous eût du labyrinthe enseigné les détours. 

Que de soins m’eût coûtés cette tête charmante 1 


PHÈDRE 


101 


Un fil n’eût point assez rassuré votre amante: 

Compagne du péril qu’il vous fallait chercher, 

Moi-même devant vous j’aurais voulu marcher; 

Et Phèdre, au labyrinthe avec vous descendue, 

Se serait avec vous retrouvée ou perdue. 

The Director — “ W onderful ! That last verse sounds 
as if it came from Dido’s other lover.” 

The Actress — 

Et sur quoi jugez-vous que j’en perds la memorie ? 

The Stage Manager — “ Don’t you think there ought 
to be there a little recoil of your whole person ? ” 

The Actress — 

Prince, aurais-je perdu tout le soin de ma gloire ? 

Ah cruel 1 tu mas trop entendue ! 

Je t’en ai dit assez pour te tirer d’erreur. 

Hé bien! connais donc Phèdre et toute sa fureur: 

J’aime. Ne pense pas qu’au moment que je t’aime, 
Innocente â mes yeux, je m’approuve moi-même. 

The Stage Manager — “ Here let the impression bô 
given of still stronger moral suffering.” 

The Actress — 

Ni que du fol amour qui trouble ma raison 
Ma lâche complaisance ait nourri le poison ; 

Objet infortuné des vengeance célestes, 

Je m’abhorre encore plus que tu ne me détestes, 

Les dieux m’en sont témoins, ces Dieux qui dans mon flanc. 

The Stage Manager — Give more emphasis to the 
word “Dieux” — this word is repeated twice in the 
same verse.” 

The Director — Yes ; emphasize the word Dieu — but 
do not descend in this scene to hysteria. You have a 
talent far superior to that. You must remember that 


102 


PHÈDRE. 


you are a victim to Fate, a woman who succumbed to 
the vengeance of the gods. That is the tradition of 
the Theâtre-Français. 

The Actress — 

Les Dieux m’en sont témoins, ces Dieux qui dans mon flanc 
Ont allumé le feu fatal à tout mon sang ; 

Ces Dieux qui se sont fait une gloire cruelle 
De séduire le cœur d’une faible mortelle. 

Toi-meme en ton esprit rappelle le passé : 

C’est peu de t’avoir fui, cruel, je t’ai chassé. 

Here La Faustin eut short her speech by phrases 
addressed to Hippolytus : 

“ Do not look at me in that way. Assume the air 
of a man who is weary of my love and turns away his 
head. If you do not do that how can I say : “ Si tes 
yeux un moment pouvaient me regarder?” 

J’ai voulu te paraître odieuse, inhumaine ; 

Pour mieux te résister, j’ai recherché ta haine. 

De quoi m’ont profité mes inutiles soins ? 

Tu me haïssais plus, je ne t’ aimais pas moins. 

The Stage Manager — •“ That^'e ne f aimais pas moins y 
should be in a softer tone. Don’t you think so ? ” 

The Actress — 

Tes malheurs te prêtaient encor de nouveaux charmes, 

J’ai langui, j’ai séché dans les feux, dans les larmes: 

Il suffit de te yeux pour t’en persuader, 

Si tes yeux un moment pouvaient me regarder. 

Que dis-je ! cet aveu que je te viens de faire, 

Cet aveuisi honteux, le crois tu volontaire ? 

Tremblante pour ue fils que je n’osais trahir, 

Je te venais prier 

The Director — “Separate that ‘ je te like the *je te y 
veux faire ? It won’t do to run those syllables 
together I ” 


PHÈDRE. 


103 


The Actress — 

Je te venois prier de ne le point hair : 

Faibles projets d’un cœur trop plein de ce qu’il aime ! 

Hélas ! je ne t’ai pu parler que te toi-même 1 
Venge-toi, punis moi d’un odieux amour : 

Digne fils d’un héros qui t’a donné le jour, 

Délivre l’univers d’un monstre qui t’irrite. 

La veuve de Thésée ose aimer Hyppolyte I 

The Director — “ Yes; that will do perfectly. 

The Actress — 

Voilà mon cœur: c’est à que ta main doit frapper, 

Impatient déjà d’expier son offense, 

Au-devant de ton bras je le sens qui s’avance. 

Frappe 

The Stage Manager — “ First dénoûement — and from 
here to the end of the couplet it is rinforzando . 

The Actress — 

Frappe; ou si tu le crois indigne de tes coups, 

Si ta haine m’envie un supplice si doux, 

Ou si d’un sang trop vil, ta main serait trempée. 

Au défaut de ton bras prête-moi ton épée ; 

Donne. 

And La Faustin addressing Hippolytus says in an 
aggressive tone — “ Really I can’t look for your sword 
under your tunic, the gesture is a most difficult one for 
me, you must help me with some movement — which 
must be something more than commonplace. 


104 


THE ACTRESS. 


CHAPTER XI. 

THE ACTRESS. 

B Y the study of the role of Phèdre — by the complete 
possession which this tragedy had taken of her 
brain — by her determined efforts to feel the passion 
and the flames that devoured the wife of Theseus — a 
devouring fire — and this is a more ordinary pheno- 
mena than is supposed — was kindled in La Faustin. 

Vaguely conscious of this, she was yet astonished at 
the intensity of the pleasure given her by the odor of 
a flower, drank in from the half-closed hollow of her 
hand with half closed eyes — and with a strange sound 
in her ear all the while like the roar of the sea re- 
tained in its shells — La Faustin spent much of her time 
in reverie which was not thought — when her brain 
seethed and throbbed, and her flesh quivered with desire. 

A mad longing for love, at first for the love of 
William Ray ne, on whom her thoughts lingered with 
strange persistency, but later she was ready to love 
any one. The regular routine of her domestic life with 
Blancheron was broken up forever. 

This strange physical state was in a great measure 
fostered by her brain, for the actress had fully made up 
her mind that if her whole being were not shaken to 
its foundation by a passion, however brief in duration — 


THE ACTRESS. 


105 


if some tempest did not stir the monotony of her life, 
she would never find the tenderness, the ardor and the 
fire, which were exacted by Racine’s rôle. 

She even went so far as to ask herself if her calm 
and satisfied life, the life as it were of a married 
woman, had not benumbed her faculties and her per- 
ceptions ; if her acting had not lost much of its delicacy 
and of its fire, and if in her last creations she had shown 
the power and the originality which the public had a 
right to expect and demand from her. 

She thought over the years when she first played, 
years ©f poverty and privations, years when her lovers 
were to be counted by months, when she lived a suc- 
cession of dramas of the heart, and she decided that 
those miserable and feverish years, had been those of 
her most brilliant successes and most incontestable 
triumphs, triumphs to which she had a right to look 
back with pride. 

At the same time that she was haunted by these 
thoughts, there lurked in her memory all sorts of 
cynical theories preached by her sister on the hygiene 
of talented women, and on the masculinity of the 
artist. A woman in her voice and her declamation, an 
artist in the development of these vocal organs, but 
endowed with many of the qualities, the worst 
qualities of the other sex, she heard Maria insist that 
there was always something of the libertine in the full 
development of genius. It was at such times, without 
motive or reason, that there came to La Faustin a 
foolish, romantic, mad desire to forsake this quiet every- 


106 


THE ACTRESS. 


day life — to break with Blancheron — to sell her Hôtel 
—to dismiss all the habitués of her house — to break, 
in short, all these bourgeois ties with one single blow, 
and seek again the happiness of her lost youth in the 
lonely apartment in a quiet quartier where she had 
once lived, and in the windows of which she had 
recently seen a placard. This thought haunted her ; 
she saw herself there living again those free and capri- 
cious hours, and carrying to her work at the Theatre 
the rebound of their feverish joys and sorrows. 


ART IN COSTUME. 


107 


CHAPTER XII. 

ART IN COSTUME. 

I N the dim light of the stage the vague, shadowy 
outlines of a palace in Troczene, were to be seen. 
From the coulisses came a crowd of women garbed in 
tunics and clamydes, draped in the ample folds of 
palliums — chanting a chorus with the noble gestures 
of dead generations. 

It seemed, in fact, as if a procession of Greek 
phantoms had taken possession of the stage, astonish- 
ing the ears of the Nineteenth Century with the 
sonorous music of a lyric language. There was Phèdre, 
the wife of Theseus, the daughter of Minos and of 
Pasiphae, in her starry tunic, with a fillet of gold over 
her brow; there were Theseus and Hippolytus, the son 
of Theseus and Antiope, Queen of the Amazons, 
clothed in skins as she is seen in Guérin’s picture, and 
there was Aricie, a Princess of the royal blood of 
Athens ; and there was old Theramcus, the tutor of 
Hippolytus — and Œnone, nurse and confidante of 
Phèdre. 

And through the economically lighted stagehand the 
dreary emptiness of the auditorium, now rang the 
sonorous Alexandrines, and amid pathetic gestures 
and the sweeping of soft, falling drapery the drama 
went on. 


108 


ART IN COSTUME. 


The whole effect was that of an enormous picture 
painted for the Prix de Rome, and exhibited in a 
cellar jarred by the rolling of carriages. 

The placard in the corridor of the Foyer des Acteurs 
stated, however, that it was the dress rehearsal and 
the last rehearsal of Phèdre. 

The fifth act being over the men and the women of 
the tragedy scattered through the theatre, laughing 
and talking, and telling their little jokes in a manner 
that showed how little impression had been made upon 
them, by the words they had heard and uttered. 

La Faustin went into the Foyer des Acteurs , and 
there the Greek Queen, in broad daylight, made a 
scene half laughing and half angry, with an old 
painter of great talent, and with his friends, who had 
kindly said to her when she began to study the rôle of 
Phèdre — 

“ I will design your costume ; we will make it 
for you.” 

And after many long sessions three water colored 
sketches had been made, from which one was selected ; 
the costumer was summoned and fully instructed, then 
the costume was tried on, changed and corrected over 
and over again. The actress had pronounced it charm- 
ing, and now she complained bitterly that it was 
extremely unbecoming. 

“ It will not do ! ” she said, “ it will not do at all ; 
I cannot consent to looking so ugly. You surely can’t 
think this straight up and down effect is either pretty 
or becoming?” 

“ But my dear child, you must wear a tunic, you 


ART IN COSTUME. 


109 


know. You must remember too that I have endeav- 
ored to reproduce the bas relief on the Villa Borghese 
which we looked at together.” 

“ Villa Borghese ! Villa Borghese Î who cares for the 
Villa Borghese? Did not the women of those days 
wear any petticoats ! I really cannot, even to please 
you, go about with only this drapery over my skin ! ” 

“ But did you not tell me that you wanted a costume 
which should be thoroughly antique in its character ? ” 

“ Of course I did, but I never meant to take off my 
stiff skirts. Then too, what do you think of the col- 
ors ? ” and she turned to the other women, and actress 
like was deeply interested in the costumes of the 
actresses who were to play with her. “I prefer the 
colors of those things that Aricie wears. The shades 
you have chosen, you see, are painters’ colors, only fit 
for pictures ! ” 

A little impatient and with friendly contempt in his 
smiling eyes, the old painter spoke of historical truth, 
and La Faustin, great artist as she was, being still more 
of a woman, answered : 

“You see my dear friend, I don’t care a rush 
about being historical, I want to be beautiful, and I 
really must have this costume changed before the first 
representation. It must be altered a little — no, a great 
deal. The colors must be brighter, and it must set out 
a little at the back.” And as La Faustin talked she 
bunched her drapery together and by way of driving 
away the ill humour of her old friend she took several 
steps of a Spanish cachucha in the soft falling folds of 
her antique garment. 


110 


NEW FALLEN SNOW. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

NEW FALLEN SNOW. 

A FAUSTIN slept the sleep common to actresses 



I À before they appear in a new part. A sleep that 
is interrupted by sudden awakings, by wild exclama- 
tions and hurried appeals. A sleep which is more 
fatiguing than restful. For hours Juliette was only 
the passionate woman of Racine’s tragedy. At a very 
early hour she rose, for she could not sleep, and was in 
such a burning fever that she moved from side to side 
of her bed seeking a cool place to lie upon. 

She threw on a dressing gown and opening the win- 
dow leaned out. 

There was snow although the air was like Spring, 
and even the snow under the South wind did not 
look like Winter, it was more like the soft whiteness 
of pale flowers — like Christmas roses. It seemed to 
have too an inner light, like an alabaster shade over a 
lamp. 

La Faustin felt an almost irresistible desire to walk 
upon this marvellous whiteness, and to feel the fresh 
breeze blow in her face. The evening before, her sister 
had asked Blancheron to execute a commission for her 
at the Bourse, and oddly enough she had not herself 
seen Blancheron for twenty-four hours. She would go 
and call upon him she thought. 


NEW FALLEN SNOW. 


Ill 


And before many minutes she was in the street 
among the crowd, not of persons hurried and irritated, 
but of young people, gay and happy — men humming 
a love song, and women with smiling faces going to 
their daily work. 

When she reached la rue d'Amsterdam where 
Blancheron had a pied a terre in the rez de chausseé , the 
concièrge said as he opened the door, “Monsieur is 
not in his rooms, you will find him in his fencing 
gallery.” 

La Faustin passed through the garden at the end of 
which Blancheron had built a gallery where he exer- 
cised every day with a friend. When she entered this 
gallery La Faustin found there only the fencing mas- 
ter who was putting away the foils and restoring order 
to the place. 

“What, is there no one here?” said La Faustin, as 
fatigued by mounting the stairs she sank on the bench 
in the corner. 

“No,” answered the fencing master as he stood erect 
with the foils in his hand that he had just picked up 
from the floor and showing a handsome youthful face, 
with eyes animated by recent exercise and victory. 
“No, Monsieur Blancheron had just gone out with a 
friend who is about to fight a duel and who came in for 
an hour’s practice. He is a good swordsman, that gen- 
tleman. I had a hard bout with him.” 

“ That is something new ! ” exclaimed La Faustin, in- 
dicating with her half gloved hand a panoply of swords 
ancient and modern, recently hung upon the wall. She 


112 


NEW FALLEN SNOW. 


said this in an indolent way as if she found it almost 
too much trouble to speak. 

“ Then you say he has gone out ? ” she repeated 
presently in a soft voice with an almost imperceptible 
dilation of the nostrils. 

La Faustin rose and went to the door, there she 
hesitated and after moving about the room in an un- 
certain sort of way she returned to the seat she had 
previously occupied. The fencing master gathered 
up the foils and carried them into a small dark room 
at the end of the gallery. He was a brunette with 
short crisp hair, brown eyes and moustache, and looked 
like a handsome young adventurer of the Court of 
Valois; he had the throat of a young bull, and the grace 
and elasticity of a tiger characterized his movements. 

La Faustin looked at him and while she did so, she 
felt the arteries beat in her temples. 

“ Did he not say when he would return ? ” she asked 
after a long silence. 

“ No,” answered the young man still occupied with 
what he was doing, and not noting this woman’s strange 
manner. 

Juliette sat nailed to her seat by some magnetic 
power. 

Her veins ran liquid fire, her pulses beat, she shiv- 
ered first with cold and then panted with fever. Her 
brain rejected the intellectual part of her rôle while 
her flesh was permeated with the fatal passion of the 
Queen. She sat perfectly motionless however, her 
eyes half vailed under their heavy lids fixed on the 


NEW 1 ALLEN iJOW. 113 

young fencing master. Presently she said something, 
the young man did not hear her. 

“ Madame ? ” he asked inquiringly, “ what did you 
say ? ” 

“Nothing! ” she answered savagely. 

Their eyes met as she spoke. 

In a moment more the door of the gallery was thrown 
open and La Faustin tearing herself from the detain- 
ing grasp of the young man fled down the garden 
walk, while he stood looking after her in angry aston- 
ishment. 

“ Upon my word ! ” he said, “ that is a queer cus- 
tomer. She certainly wanted me to kiss her; if ever a 
woman’s eyes said as much, hers did, and when I did 
so, she was as angry as a she-panther ! ” 


7 


JH 


MA6DALFX. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

MAGDALEN. 

“ T RECEIVED your note and here I am!" said 

X Bonne-Ame, the day after this scene at the 
gallery, as she entered Juliette’s apartment. 

Bonne-Ame added, as she looked around with the air 
of an inquisitor : 

“Has my modest sister committed some enormity?” 

The room was very dark, for the curtains were 
drawn over the window, keeping out the sunshine and 
bright light of day, and Juliette lay on the floor in an 
attitude of utter desolation, her hair streaming over 
her shoulders and her naked feet thrust into slippers. 
The very folds of her dressing-gown spoke of desolation 
and despair. 

On seeing her sister, Juliette buried her face in her 
cushion, and exclaimed, amid sobs and tears, her face 
still hidden in the rough embroidery : 

“ I am deadly ashamed of myself ! I loathe myself ! 
No ; I can never tell you ! ” 

“ Very good,” said her sister, “I can tell you myself 
then. You have been too kind to some nameless 
fellow, and it is this trifle which has made this 
repentant Magdalen of you.” 

“ No ; it is no such thing, I tell you, no I ” answered 
La Faustin, indignantly. 


MAGDALEN. 


115 


“Well then, you resisted your impulses. I am 
sure it was not worth while to send for me to tell me 
that, and I am going away.” 

“Stay — you shall not go — I must tell you some- 
thing ; and yet,” she added, in an indescribable tone, 
“ I loathe your way of looking at matters. I loathe 
and scorn your advice ! ” 

La Faustin then related the scene of the previous 
day. 

Her sister listened like a cat lapping milk ; she was 
greatly interested, and felt all the joy of a thoroughly 
vicious nature in learning of the temptations by which 
a friend, whom she is obliged to respect, has been 
assailed. 

“ Wretch!” cried Juliette, starting to her feet, “you 
are laughing. Ah ! the misery and the shame of being 
your sister, of knowing that the same blood runs in 
our veins. Accursed be that cradle where we lay 
together. But for you I should have been, I honestly 
believe, a good woman. But you were bad, even as a 
child. It was you who, for your own amusement, 
dragged me into vice, for you always loved it ! ” 

Bonne-Ame who, more than once in the life of this 
tempestuous actress, had gone through similar scenes, 
and who knew that at such moments her sister liked 
to attribute all her weaknesses of the flesh to any one 
rather than herself, waited to the end of this tirade 
and then said, between her teeth, with a little shrug of 
her shoulders : 

“ Go on. By all means, go on, if it soothes you to 
abuse your relations.” 


116 


MAGDALEN. 


Exasperated by this sarcastic tranquillity, La Faus- 
tin put her face close to her sister’s, and hissed 
through her teeth : 

“ It is to you alone that I am indebted for low 
tastes, and vulgar thoughts. I know you thoroughly 
from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head. 
The mire of which you are made has clung in part 
to me ! ” 

And La Faustin extended threatening hands, but 
they did not touch her sister who gently took the poor, 
quivering fingers of the actress in hers, and said, 
softly : 

“ My dear child, is it not very unwise in you to 
work yourself into such a state as this, when you are 
to play a new rôle to-night?” 

“ No. I shall not play. I sent to say that I was 
ill ; the physician from the Theatre will be here in a 
few minutes, but it is all the same to me, I certainly 
shall not play, no matter what he says.” 

And La Faustin dropped into a corner of the sofa, 
and buried her face in her two hands. Presently she 
lifted her head, her face was radiant with smiles, all 
the resentful humiliation of a few minutes previous 
had vanished. 

“ Little sister,” she said, gently, “ I am happy, so 
very happy — for yesterday it was the thought of him 
that saved me.” 

Then a gray shadow stole over her face and utterly 
oblivious of the presence of her sister, she began to 
pace the salon , talking aloud to herself with ever 
growing excitement. 


MAGDALEN. 


117 


“ And yet I was made to love with all that is great 
and noble in the heart of a woman, a man whose 
mind and talents I could respect, and yet I feel 
myself contaminated by degrading impulses and temp- 
tations. I feel at times as if I were the football of 
Fate, and that I am crushed by the same fatality that 
weighed down that woman whose rôle I play. Oh ! 
that terrible Venus of those old tragedies!” 

And here the actress recalled to her rôle, suddenly 
and almost visibly shuddered to the marrow of her 
bones, with superstitious terror of the Goddess whose 
name until that day had been but an empty sound 
in her ears, but who now took entire possession of her, 
in all her strange, mysterious power. Then suddenly 
changing her tone, she said to herself: 

“No ; I will never become the victim of this aveng- 
ing Goddess ! ” 

“Look here, Juliette,” said Bonne-Ame, opening a 
volume of Racine on the table. She began to read 
aloud : 

“ Ce nest plus une ardeur dans mes veines cachée . 

“ C'est Venus tout entière à sa proie attachée .” 

“ How do you say these lines?” asked Maria. 

“Why, in this way,” answered the actress, uncon- 
sciously. 

“Yes, I know, I heard you recite them at the 

rehearsal but — ” Bonne-Ame hesitated. She had 

spoken without enthusiasm or admiration. 

“Tell me frankly,” said Juliette, hastily, “you do 
not like my rendering? You are not satisfied? ” 


118 


MAGDALEN. 


“ The truth is, I cannot exactly judge by these lines 
detached from the others. Suppose you recite the 
whole passage/’ 

La Faustin immediately did as her sister requested. 

“That is very good,” said Maria, “but is it the best 
you can do ? That is the question.” 

“ I will try it again, verse by verse, then,” answered 
the actress, with an impatient shrug of the shoulders. 

And La Faustin began to act as if she were on the 
stage, stopping occasionally to turn to her sister and 
say : 

“ How is that ? ” 

And Bonne-Ame, with shakes and nods, with uplifted 
brows and corners of her lips drawn down, with inter- 
jections and an occasional “ Pshaw ! ” awoke all her 
sister’s ambition and threw her into a state of artistic 
emulation. Maria found continual fault with gestures 
and intonations, and at the end of an hour of this con- 
tradiction and spurring on of her sister’s talent, she 
had fully succeeded in arousing all the actress. With 
impassioned gestures and pathetic declamation La 
Faustin was doing her best before her sister. 

At this moment the physician attached to the theatre 
made his appearance and stopping at the half open 
door, said to the actress. 

“ I told them so, I told them there was nothing the 
matter with you, that you would play to-night, I will 
hasten back to the theatre with the good news.” 

After the physician came the old painter, who had 
condescended to come in person to superintend the 
alterations in the costume for Phèdre. 


MAGDALEN. 


119 


And while La Faustin, under the hands of the painter 
and the costumer, tried on her tunic in the salon 
where the curtain had now been drawn aside from the 
windows, her sister departed, saying to Guenagaud 
who was hanging in despair about the staircase : 

“ She will play to-night, you need not be troubled.” 

Then came the dentist to brighten the enamel of the 
teeth, then the Manicure to polish the nails etc. etc., 
for with a new rôle the actress feels the necessity of 
being made over anew, as it were. In the haste of all 
these serious trifles, the fixed thoughts of the morning 
were by degrees entirely dissipated and La Faustin was 
again only the actress. She had in fact so entirely 
forgotten the occurrence of the previous day, that 
for some fifteen minutes before dinner she played 
besique with little Luzy in this same salon which had 
seen her dying of shame and grief that very morning. 
In the middle of this game the old Duchesse de 
Taillebourg, who adored Juliette, was announced. 
This old lady, in order to bring the actress good luck 
that night, came to present a relic that had been in her 
family for hundreds of years, and also a huge pot of 
rouge made by the Widow Martin that had been found 
in a wardrobe which had not been opened since the 
first Revolution. 

The actress who was in a state of nervous excite- 
ment, showing itself in little shrieks and elfish tricks, 
leaped nearly over the head of her partner, and rushed 
to the door of the grand salon. Before it was opened 
however the entire manner of this most capricious and 


120 


MAGDALEN. 


variable woman was transformed, and she said with the 
air of a veritable grand-dame : 

“I am most happy to welcome the Duchesse.” 

At four o’clock La Faustin dined, eating the light 
repast which was usual with her on such nights as she 
played. An egg in a consommé, a dozen Ostend 
oysters and some fruit. 

“No, it is useless,” she said, when, after she had 
finished her dinner, she stood at the fire trying to 
warm her hands — her hands which had been like ice 
for the last two or three days — “ they will be as cold 
as this until the first act is over, and then they will 
burn like fire.” 

At five o’clock she entered her carriage for a drive 
on the Champs Elyseés. She always enjo}’ed this hour 
more than any other in the twenty-four, and in this 
quiet tête-à-tête with herself in the twilight, she had 
often thought out her best and happiest effects. At 
six o’clock she entered her dressing-room at the Thea- 
tre Français as she had been in the habit of doing at 
the Odéon, in order to have before her two hours for a 
last rehearsal with her prompter. 

But at the end of one hour’s work she dismissed 
him, and throwing herself on the sofa, she sought to 
find some rest, not in sleep, for to her quivering nerves 
that was impossible, but rest in absolute immobility, 
which should enable her to exert all her dramatic force 
later. 


SUCCESS. 


121 


CHAPTER XY. 

SUCCESS. 

“ T)RAY move, friends ; pray move ! ” It was La 

X Faustin who, all tremulous and quivering, ut- 
tered this phrase over and over again, even before 
Œnone had finished her lines, which she addressed to 
Hippolytus. She is at last on the stage, under her 
heavy vails — vails too heavy for her weak frame to 
carry. She sinks into the antique chair, and there, 
with one hand raised with effort above her eyes to 
protect them from the blinding light of the sun, she 
addressed to that orb the farewell of the dying. One 
arm fell by her side in the most graceful of classic 
attitudes. 

The house rang with applause. 

Then the Queen, in a voice that thrilled every lis- 
tener in that crowded house, began the story of her 
secret passion for the son of her husband Theseus, 
and with each verse she uttered, she felt the atmosphere 
of separation existing at a first representation between 
the public and the actor, disappear. This distance, this 
lack of contact, is like thin gauze vails between them, 
which are swept away one by one with each success of 
the piece. 

And the physical prostration of this daughter of 
the flesh, crushed by the anger of Venus, incipient 


122 


SUCCESS. 


insanity, love, desire and anger, as well as tenderness, 
were all represented by La Faustin with marvellous 
power. Her voice was pathos itself. She rendered 
the various emotions of Phèdre with the most wonder- 
ful modulations, with the most delicate transitions, 
and by a sagacious use of her lower tones. Added to 
this art of diction were her gestures, which were as 
eloquent as words, pauses as eloquent as gestures, and 
the varying expressions of her beautiful, sad face. 
And then, as La Faustin ended the line, “Mon mal 
vient de plus loin,” it was more than bravos that 
rent the air, it was an expression of entire approbation 
throughout the whole house. 

She had conquered the house. 

When the act was over, La Faustin fell exhausted 
into the armchair which stood ready for her in the 
coulisses , and over her neck and shoulders, over her 
whole frame, in fact, passed that little shiver, that ner- 
vous contraction, which follows after violent physical 
exercise. 

At the end of some fifteen minutes the actress went 
to her dressing-room with the faithful Guenagaud. 

Guenagaud was the watchdog and the shadow of 
La Faustin at the theatre. She never lost sight of 
her mistress for a minute ; she kept her eyes on her 
while enjoying the admiration she received from the 
enthusiastic scene-shifters, whom she was ready to 
embrace for their admiration of her beloved mistress. 
She was always ready to throw a shawl over Juliette’s 
shoulders, to wrap her feet in a fur rug, and to hand 
her a bottle of smelling salts. 


SUCCESS. 


123 


When the actress reached her dressing-room Guena- 
gaud took from her pocket a bottle of cold bouillon 
and insisted on Juliette’s taking some, and then, re- 
corking the bottle, restored it to her capacious pocket. 
Never did this bottle leave her pocket, for this woman 
had the odd notion that an actress, Lecouvreur, had 
been poisoned. She knew the story but imperfectly, 
but it had taken a strong hold of her narrow imagina- 
tion. She believed that rivals of her mistress, jealous of 
her superior talent, wished to get rid of her by poison. 

A few visitors between the first and second acts 
did not give La Faustin any very clear idea of the 
sentiments of the house. Juliette interrogated with 
anxiety these men who brought her only empty, com- 
monplace compliments, all the time trying to moisten 
her lips and throat which were parched and dry. 

She played the second act and this time she had not 
been in her loge three minutes when there came a quick 
rap at the door, and presented by Luzy came a little 
man with an eager face and restless eyes. This was the 
greatest modern sculptor, he who has imparted to 
stone, marble and bronze the absolute look of flesh. 

He was in a state of enthusiastic admiration which 
he expressed in almost brutal terms. He came to beg 
permission of the actress to make a statue after her — 
a statue of Tragedy. And without troubling himself 
the least about the other people present he begged her to 
repeat one pose for him. He raised her from her chair 
familiarly, and almost by force arranged her tunic. 
And he repeated as he stepped back, crushing several 
feet behind him as he did so : 


124 


SUCCESS. 


“ Superb ! That would be superb ! ” 

The sculptor was followed by illustrious narnes-^ 
celebrities of all kinds, habitués of the theatre — dra- 
niatic dilettantes, delicate and critical judges, who all 
confirmed the actress in the certainty of her triumph. 

Before long the pile of bonbon boxes and packages 
became so large that they served as footstools for the 
women who came with congratulations to her loge, and 
were fortunate enough to procure chairs. In the third 
act there began to descend on the wife of Theseus a pro- 
found sadness — an eager and engrossing thirst for 
death — her hands imparted to her vail the folds of a 
winding sheet — and the actress appeared before the 
silent house beautiful, with the funereal beauty of a 
dead Venus. 

At the end of this scene as La Faustin left the stage, 
she ran against Kagache, who brought her all he had 
heard in the corridors, and among the newspaper men 
in the boxes. 

“ Theo says that Racine has no talent, but that you 
are wonderful. He declares that in his article he shall 
make no allusion to the poet of Louis Quatorze, but 
intends to confine his criticism and admiration to you.” 
The Critic, Monsieur Chose, wore by chance, a clean 
white vest, and Ragache told him that this unwonted 
cleanliness should dispose him to amiability. As to the 
critic attached to one of the important daily papers, he 
was not there himself, but he had sent a fair friend, and 
Georgine had sworn that she should give a most favor- 
able report of the actress. Villemissant had said that 


success. 125 

a tragedy was but dull work at best, but that La Faus- 
tin was less dull than other actresses. 

And so Ragache went on, telling Juliette that the 
Journals would all come out in her favor — he was sure 
of everybody except old Janot, who had had a severe 
attack of the gout, and who limped about with his leg 
swathed in bandages. He had declared between two 
groans of agony that Juliette was lacking in tender- 
ness in the second act. On the whole,” Ragache con- 
tinued, “you need have no fears of tomorrow’s jour- 
nals.” 

The Tragedienne was loudly applauded in the fourth 
act, and when the curtain fell on the fifth, the house 
made a vociferous demand for La Faustin. 

She came out on the arm of Guenagaud, who was 
obliged to employ all her self-control to prevent her- 
self from crying with pain under the fierce clutch of 
J uliette’s hand. When at last the actress reached her 
dressing room she fell into a chair, her limbs as stiff as 
if she had an attack of catalepsy. Deaf and dumb she 
made no reply to the terrified appeals of the old woman 
who wished to summon the physician attached to 
the theatre, except by a negative shake of the head, 
and by touching one hand to her throat and lips, as if 
to say that the nerves of both were so contracted that 
she could not speak. 

She sat in this way for nearly an hour, when she 
drew a long sigh which seemed to lift a great load 
from herself, and restore her in some degree to herself. 
Then she said a few words, and rising from her chair 


126 


SUCCESS. 


she entered the small salon attached to her dressing 
room through the open door of which she could see an 
impatient crowd in the corridor. 

And then came a perfect avalanche of excited 
women, who rushed into La Faustin’s arms to offer 
their congratulations. There were passionate caresses, 
never ending embraces, for the men as well as the 
women took it upon themselves to embrace Phèdre, 
whose face was still white with powder. Wrapped in 
the folds of a brown mantle, she was passed from one 
to another as if she had no volition of her own, as if 
she were without form or substance — a mere rag 
blown in a strong wind. All this time the actress 
said over and over again, amid tears and smiles: 

“ Ah ! my friends ! my dear friends ! ” 

After a while all the people departed and there were 
left in the salon only those men who had been invited 
by the actress to supper. 

La Faustin felt the need of fresh air, and declared 
she would walk home. They all therefore started 
together, and as they passed through la Rue Saint 
Honoré, disturbing the little groups gathered around 
the doors of the cafés, there was a murmur of “ Look ! 
there is La Faustin ! ” 

It was a noisy party, evidently bent on making a 
night of it — the youngest members thinking it a capi- 
tal joke to exchange passages of wit with the coachmen 
as they sat on the boxes of the coupes drawn up by 
the sidewalk — keeping up the lively badinage until 
they turned the corner. 


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127 


CHAPTER XVI. 


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'HE guests of La Faustin were assembled in the 


JL grand salon in the little Hôtel in la rue Godot de 
Mauroi, awaiting the actress who had gone to change 
her dress. 

Littérateurs, poets and painters elbowed each other. 
There were men of eminence in all professions, poli- 
ticians and savants, generals and doctors. In this 
crowd there were as usual several persons who had 
come on whose invitations no one seemed to know, 
who wore long beards, pins in their cravats or panta- 
loons à la cosaque , or foreign decorations which puzzled 
the curious, who were obliged to remain unsatisfied all 
the evening. 

Groups pretended to talk together, but uttered sen- , 
tences only at long intervals. Solitary individuals 
wandered off into the corners to look at the objects of 
Art, and were evidently lonely and bored. 

And .one reporter, in a low chair, sat writing by the 
light of a lamp behind him, a report of the evening’s 
performances on cigarette paper. 

La Faustin appeared in a wonderful toilette — it was 
neither a peignoir nor a robe, but partaking of both. 
It was of cream satin, with trimmings of velvet, of the 


128 


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tone which was embroidered with tuberoses in seed 
pearl. In her hair were leaves of metallic green, the 
green of the wings of a Katydid. On her breast she 
wore a cluster of precious stones set as flowers, above 
which the white throat, exposed by the square cut 
corsage, had all the whiteness of marble, while the 
glitter of those green leaves imparted a strange and 
ominous expression to her fair and smiling face. 

There was a universal movement of admiration as 
she entered, and La Faustin, standing in the centre of 
the room giving an occasional impatient push with her 
foot to the voluminous masses of her train, began to 
talk in a much louder voice than usual, for her nerves 
had by no means recovered their serenity. She dis- 
cussed with her friends all the events of the evening, 
the stupidity of the leader of the claque , of the people 
who had annoyed her by coughing at the Odéon, and 
had followed her to the Comédie-Française. Her 
laughter was almost hysterical, and her voice broke 
occasionally. 

At last came the magical words from the Maître 
d' Hotel: 

“ Madame est servie .” 

She took the arm instantly of a young stranger to 
whom she happened to be talking, and to whom she 
had been for the last minute or two listening with 
singular attention. 

She turned her head slightly as she led the way, and 
said over her shoulder, “ No ceremony here, if you 
please. Sit where you choose.” 


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129 


The actress herself took a chair in the centre of the 
table, her sister facing her. 

There was at first the usual silence before this long, 
damask-covered table, glittering with crystal and silver, 
glowing with hot-house flowers, lighted by tall cande- 
labra, and by a chandelier with cut glass pendants. 
Cupids smiled down from the ceilings amid clouds and 
flowers. 

To this brief silence succeeded a hum of conversa- 
tion as each mouthful thawed the stiffness. 

“ A supper with wax candles ! Delightful ! ” said 
one. “ If women only knew the effect of candle light 
on their complexions there would be neither gas nor 
lamps in a dining-room in Paris.” 

La Faustin said to the young man whom she had 
placed at her right : 

“You have a delightful voice, did you know it? 
No, you probably have no idea of its effect upon per- 
sons organized like myself. Talk, that I may hear it 
again. I am quite sure that when I am in certain 
moods you would bring the tears to my eyes.” 

And the actress, leaning a little toward him, listened 
as to a musical instrument that stirred her soul. 

“ Charming ! Charming ! ” repeated La Faustin, with 
her head a little on one side in an ecstasy of delight, 
absolutely watching the words drop from his lips. 

“ I wish you would come and see me every day,” she 
said, “to hear you speak, to hear you read, would 
be rapture. There are tones in your voice such as I 
never heard before. Upon my word, Sir, a declaration 
8 


130 


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from you would be a dangerous thing;” and the 
woman here laughed coquettishly. 

Then turning to the table, Juliette said: “Gentle- 
men, permit me to recommend that fish — it comes from 
the Volga — a present from a friend there who sent it to 
me etherized, yes, absolutely etherized. At all events 
it was insensible, but it was not dead. It seems to 
me in that way fish might be sent all over the world.” 

Then La Faustin turned to her companion on her 
right. She turned to him with those curving, undu- 
lating lines of her body, that one may see any day at a 
dinner or supper when a woman sits next a man who 
pleases her. 

One side of her figure, the side next the neighbor to 
whom she is indifferent, looks inert, almost angular, 
while the other is all-bewitching grace that is very 
amusing to watch. The woman is, so to speak, 
thoroughly alive only on one side, which shivers and 
palpitates at the contact of a shoulder or an arm. 

Bonne-Ame on the opposite side of the table was 
delightfully dignified, affecting the manners of the best 
society. She talked considerably of the tapestry she 
was working for the church in the village where 
Carsonac had a country house. 

Carsonac was extremely uncomfortable at this sup- 
per ; he sat at the side of a man to whom he declared 
that Balzac was intolerably dull, that he himself 
was tired of life, to which his companion constantly 
replied, “ yes, precise!}'.” Finally Carsonac asked him- 
self if this man had taken too much wine, or if he 
intended to be funny. 


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131 


The ball of conversation finally fell into the hands 
of a Statesman, whom one instinctively felt to be a man 
of bonnes fortunes. His face was youthful, but his hair 
was white. 

“ Yes, gentlemen, you may preach and you may legis- 
late as much ’ as you please, but a little libertinism is 
necessary! It softens the manners, humanizes society 
and refines the men. All the greatest men of all times 
have been libertines.” 

“Oh! Oh!” 

“ You know,” murmured in his ear the man who sat 
next to him, a guest with a red face, looking as if it 
were cut out of a withered radish — “ You know that 
this government consists of the Invalides of all the 
Palférine ! ” 

And the tirade of the Statesman was followed by a 
fusilade of brief replies and curt sentences. 

“‘This young dramatist is clever!’ ‘He has the 
aesthetics of a lamp-lighter at the theatre!’ ‘That 
actress is distinguished looking!’ ‘One would think 
she was a vivandière of a marching regiment ! ’ ” 

“ Don’t talk to me of him — he is a fool with superior 
ideas and transcendental views.” 

“ That is the way in Paris ; the lorette whose price 
is twenty-five louis, costs a member of the Jockey Club 
a napoleon, and Monsieur de Rochefoucauld can have 
if he chooses, a servant for three hundred francs, who 
asks twelve hundred.” 

“ You are astonished at the enormous protection 
given to music by the Government ! But you forget 


132 


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that all Jewish bankers are insane on the subject of 
music.” 

“ A man with liberal ideas who wears clothes of an 
Ecclesiastical cut, distrust such as a general rule.” 

“ Oh ! she is an insufferable talker. Her sentimen- 
tality is sickening. She declares that Sweden is sym- 
pathetic with her, because it is such an innocent 
country ! ” 

At this moment La Faustin saw that her neighbor 
with the beautiful voice had laid the bones of his fish 
on the table cloth by the side of his plate. 

She watched him for a moment with an air of pouting 
disgust, looking very much like a little girl who had 
been caught with an empty bonbon box. 

She answered him no more except in monosyllables, 
and all the tender lines of her leaning form assumed an 
unusual rigidity. By degrees she withdrew herself 
almost entirely from him, and turned to her neighbor 
on her left. 

This man was a Philosopher, a man of the world, 
professing to adore the beautiful and the good. Living 
in the best society; a layman, but a sort of nineteenth 
century directeur , — taking the place of the Gospel in 
the estimation of many of his adorers, who it is hardly 
necessary to say, were women. He chose their wool 
for their embroideries, sent them the newest gossip 
from Paris when they were in the country in the sum- 
mer, or at Nice in the winter, and read to them when 
they were ill from the “ Cité de Dieu” by Saint 
Augustin. He was handsome in a very substantial 


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133 


way, and was endowed with many attractions which 
Philosophers and Professors do not as a rule possess. 
He reminded one however, as he strutted about among 
the women, of nothing so much as a cock in a barn 
yard surrounded by his many wives. 

And now this Philosopher seeing the actress turn 
toward him — paid his court to her with ardent eyes that 
gloated on the white wonder of her throat, with the 
mellifluous compliments and the gross flattery with 
which some men think it wise to insult women. 

“ But you eat nothing, absolutely nothing ! ” 

“Oh! It is always so when I have been playing; 
then too I don’t think a woman looks very pretty when 
she is going through with the work of masticating meat 
and solid food.” 

“You might nourish yourself on the essence of meat 
simply, but you have at your table to-day an authority 
on such points, ask him about it.” 

“It is very curious,” said the great chemist who 
had heard the end of this dialogue, “ that it was not 
a woman who first thought of this superfinement of 
elegance, it was a man and a savant. He was dis- 
turbed by the amount of time he necessarily consumed 
in eating, as well as disgusted at the materiality of the 
operation. I forgot to say that he was a Canon of Notre 
Dame. He went to work and invented a process of 
extracting all the goodness from meat, and then con- 
densing it. This condensation he carried about with 
him in a small bottle. But after a year or two of this 
régime our canon had a contraction of the stomach, of 


134 


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which he died. It is a melancholy fact that for ns 
simple mortals, like men and women, the ambrosia of 
the Gods is worthless, and the most etherialised food 
is certainly a turkey with truffles.” 

“And speaking of a turkey with truffles,” said a 
guest, sitting half way down the table ; “ do you 
know why Rossini wept, on the only three occasions in 
his life when he shed tears ? This is authentic, for 
I read it in a letter from the Maestro to Cherubini : 
The day when his Opera was hissed — the day that he 
for the first time heard Paganini play on his violin; 
and the day when walking on the shore of the Lac de 
Guard he dropped into the water a turkey stuffed with 
truffles, which he was carrying home under his arm.” 

The Philosopher did his best to amuse and interest 
La Faustin, who being in a most coquettish mood, 
accepted all his flattery and, in fact, gave him the most 
open encouragement. 

He had arranged a répertoire of phrases and words 
which he always used when laying siege to a woman ; 
it was very good, sometimes, but he made too general 
an application of it, without in the least considering 
the varying characteristics of the woman he addressed. 
He looked into the eyes of his neighbor and said : 

“Your beauty is most peculiar. Oh! I am a very 
good judge in such matters. And I see that you have 
literary talent — the talent of an actress is a thing apart 
— a fixed fact which it is needless for us to discuss 
now, but there exists in you still another talent lying 
latent. You ought to write, to write down that which 


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135 


passes before your eyes. Try— I will give you all the 
assistance in my power; I will guide you. If you 
only knew the charming things that the women of the 
highest society are doing under my advice and counsel 
nowadays.” 

La Faustin smiled. She unfortunately was quite 
familiar with all these phrases, they having been con- 
fided to her by a very young woman, to whom the 
philosopher had offered himself, not a fortnight before, 
as general adviser in her literary aspirations, and the 
actress was immensely disgusted at being treated as if 
she were a youthful simpleton with no experience of 
the world. 

“I am extremely obliged to you,” she said, “but 
have you not taken out a patent for your invention ? 
For indeed it is a most wonderful thing to transform 
young women and matrons into authoresses — to give 
them the pen of George Sand. For this they abandon 
domestic duties, their husbands and their children ; 
is not this so ? And how comes on your class ? ” 

And in this merciless fashion La Faustin continued 
to harass the Philosopher for some time. 

The young man, who was sitting on Juliette’s right, 
had borne her desertion very gallantly. He devoted 
himself to the pleasures of the table. He ate much 
and drank more, and by this time was smilingly tipsy; 
his head was a little bent forward, his chin buried in 
his vest. A stray lock of hair wandered over his fore- 
head. He caressed his black beard with his white 
hand, and hummed to himself an air sung by the peas- 


136 


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ants in his native province. Suddenly he leaned a 
little toward his hostess. 

“ Dear Madame,” he said, “ in the beginning of this 
supper you spoke of the pleasure it would give you 
to hear me talk, and read. It so happens that my 
father just now is horribly intermittent in his remit- 
tances, and I should be very glad — in short, Madame, 
if you would permit me, I should be glad to offer you 
the pleasure of which you spoke, daily for as many 
hours as you desire, for five hundred francs monthly. 
What do you say to that ? ” 

“We will discuss your proposition, sir, on another 
occasion.” 

The young man, quite undisturbed, continued to 
caress his beard and hum his little song. Then La 
Faustin began to fidget with the lace on her corsage. 
She threw herself back in her chair, and there came 
over her face a consternation that was almost laughable 
— a consternation mingled with disdain, with disgust 
for the men who sat on either side. 

She looked around the table, from one face to the 
other, with an almost piteous appeal in her eyes. They 
said distinctly: 

“Will no one have pity on me? Will no one 
deliver me from these two bores ? ” 

Then all at once she became perfectly motionless, 
and sat with fixed eyes, and an expression of profound 
ennui on her countenance. 

All the wit and brilliancy of the entertainment had 
vanished. General conversation also had entirely died 


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137 


away, and each individual discussed his own occupa- 
tions and interests, as is usually the case at the end of 
a repast where good wine has flowed freely. 

“Gentlemen,” said La Faustin suddenly, “that 
bottle there contains some Cape Madeira found in 
a Dutch vessel that was wrecked over a hundred 
years ago. When the vessel was found those bottles 
were entirely encrusted with shells, and each bottle 
was sold for 200 francs. Monsieur Blancheron had 
the gallantry to present me with one. Perhaps this is 
the time to drink it.” 

“And to drink the health of Phèdre!” cried the 
table as with one voice. • 

. The wine was poured out, the guests all rose, and 
amid the ring of glasses the actress was toasted with 
cries of, “ Long live Phèdre ! Long live La Faustin ! ” 

In the confusion caused by this toast the young man 
with a musical voice was saying loudly: 

“Well, upon my word, I can’t stand steadily!” 

The two sisters approached each other, and Bonne- 
Ame whispered in the ear of her sister : 

“At one moment I would have been willing to bet 
five Louis that your little neighbor would have made 
his innings.” 

“A lovely voice, if one could only have gotten rid 
of the man. Did you bring him here ? ” 

“No, not I. And how was the other? ” 

“Appalling — a pot of honey — rancid honey.” 

“And now,” cried La Faustin, as she entered her 
salon, “now I must have some music. I must hear 
Beethoven until dawn. My nerves require the relief!” 


138 


DEPRESSION. 


CHAPTER XVII. 

DEPRESSION. 

T HE day after the first representation of Phèdre, 
and after this supper, which did not break up 
until dawn, La Faustin fell a prey to one of those 
fits of gloom which overwhelmed her at times without 
the smallest reason, following invariably on the great 
expenditure of nervous fluid, in joy or feverish excite- 
ment of any nature. She breakfasted without opening 
the morning papers, and apparently without feeling the 
smallest interest in their opinion of the performance 
of the previous evening. 

She did not wish to stay at home, she did not wish 
to go out — and she dreaded visits from those persons 
w T hom she liked best in the world. 

When she opened her eyes that morning it was with 
a sinking of the heart at the sight of another long day. 
She felt no interest in anything, the things which she 
enjoyed on other days had lost all their charm. 

Everything looked dark to her, the sky, her rooms, 
and Guenagaud, herself, were alike distasteful to her 
disordered vision, she felt as if she had suddenly 
passed from a brilliantly lighted ball room into an ante- 
chamber lighted by a farthing candle. 

And her mood was not the momentary caprice of a 


DEPRESSION. 


139 


woman who feels that life is distasteful from a sudden 
and passing caprice, but it was a deeply seated dissatis- 
faction which found expression at last, the desolation 
of a heart at war with itself, of a brain that had become 
weary of the childish occupation of building card 
houses and castles in Spain, only to see them fall in 
ruins about her. 

La Faustin went to her room and seated herself in 
front of the fire, her eyes fixed on vacancy. After a 
while she looked vaguely around her and then rose and 
went to her bed, she threw aside the coverlet and with 
slow, almost unconscious movements, began to undress. 
When half undressed she rang for Guenagaud and 
said : 

“ Close the shutters and bring me a lamp. Do not 
let any one in to day.” 

u You are not ill, madame ? ” 

“ No, but I am weary of everything ; of myself, and 
of everybody else ! ” 

She turned to her wardrobe and from a half dozen 
volumes among a pile of under-clothing she selected 
one about which lingered an odor of Poudre d ’ Iris , 
and then established herself in her bed with an eider 
down quilt drawn closely around her, with the light of 
the shrouded lamp shining full on her brow, throwing 
the lower part of her face in shadow, a line of light 
on the lower lash and also a little dash on the corner 
of the mouth. 

In some dark and hopeless hour of your life in order 
to get rid of a wearisome day did it never occur to you 


140 


DEPRESSION. 


to take refuge in some preposterous book — well this is 
precisely what La Faustin now did. 

She turned her face toward the wall, the lamp light 
falling on the undulating line of her draped shoulders 
and on the short hair in her neck behind, and then 
she began to read in her little book, holding it so that 
the light enabled her to see the pages. 

The book transported the imagination of the reader 
into a strange world, a world where the mountains were 
of extraordinary heights, where the abysses were un- 
fathomable, where planets glittered and white clouds 
floated over azure skies. 

And in this warm room and dreamy atmosphere, La 
Faustin became so absorbed in her book that she saw 
the things described as if in a vision. Strange events 
without order or method followed quickly on one 
another, and as if shaken in a kaleidoscope, quickly 
formed into magical pictures, to be changed again as 
quickly. 

She found herself in the Court of Charles the First, 
and suddenly the ball-room, the music and the jewelled 
dames disappeared after a violent clapping of hands, 
— hands that belonged to no one — before the entrance 
of Paul-Emelias, surrounded by a cohort of Roman cen- 
turions bearing the scarlet tunic at the end of a lance. 
From a distance came the wild hurrahs of Roman 
legions. She realized the panic of a routed army, and 
felt herself borne away among thousands of fugitives, 
and she saw dim shadows in feminine garments who 
said to her as they held her by the hand : 


DEPRESSION. 


141 


“Adieu, forever I ” 

They disappeared with a shudder as the word Death 
fell from the lips of pale Proserpine, and Echo repeated 
in a sad wail, “Adieu forever — adieu forever ! ” 

To the woman who lay there, there were many won- 
derful things in this volume which she could not grasp 
— her intellect was too entirely without cultivation, 
she had not the key. The book was to her like a 
fairy tale to a child whose limited powers go no further 
than seeing the words. 

And as La Faustin continued to read “ The Opium 
Eater,” her brain received a new succession of ideas 
from De Quincey’s imagination, the tension of her 
nerves relaxed, she forgot the dreariness of her life 
and the tedium of the day. 


142 THE COMÉDIE-FRANÇAISE. 


CHAPTER XVIII, 


THE COMEDIE-FRANC AISE 



'HERE is no more curious museum than the Foyer 


JL des Acteurs of the Comédie-Française, where all 
the past glories of the Drama, either in sculpture or 
painting, are to be seen, and seem to smile in kind 
protection over the young actor or actress who to-day 
are making their way up the ladder of Fame. 

On this wall hangs La Duclos, as depicted by Lar- 
gilliere in all the majesty and pomp which formerly 
were the attributes of the Queens of the theatre. Her 
magnificent bust and shoulders are displayed by her 
costume as Ariadne, under the crown of stars hung 
over her head. 

La Duclos is between Baron and Likain, and below 
these is the gentle, thoughtful head of Molière, painted 
by Mignard. 

Upon the opposite wall are the two Foyers painted 
by Geoffroy, which depict Mademoiselle Mars sur- 
rounded by the actors and actresses of the first part 
of the century. Above one of these pictures is a head 
of Talma. Between the two, is the same old clock 
that has marked so many sad hours of disappointment 
or moments of joy and triumph ; on either side are the 
busts in white marble of Clairon and of La Dauge- 
ville, on a pedestal is another of Rachel. 


THE COMÉDIE-FRAN CAISE. 143 


In the center of the mantelpiece instead of a clock 
is a block of white marble, on which stands a bronze 
bust of Préville ; next the chimney is the picture 
painted by Ingres, representing Louis XIV. receiving 
Molière at his table. 

Then comes another painting representing our old 
Theatre and all the actors and actresses of the past 
in one of their rôles. In a corner of this picture is 
Molière ; his eyes look out of the canvas and not at 
any one of the faces about him. This painting was 
given by the Archbishop of Nancy to the Comédie- 
Française. And in this little museum, as seats for the 
living are large armchairs of beautiful shapes. They 
have one piece of furniture of the Eighteenth Century 
which King Louis Philippe exchanged one day for 
a lustre which he remembered having seen in his child- 
hood at his father’s. Blauvallet, when out of temper, 
was in the habit of breaking one of the crystal drops 
with his cane whenever he entered the Foyer . 

Winter evenings, among all these portraits, and the 
dull, faded green of the hangings, by the light of an- 
tique lamps, and with the leaping flames of the huge 
logs of wood, such as are burnt no where else except 
in the J ury room of the Court of Assizes — with these 
flames reflected in the long mirrors, this place is a 
most delightful one. A half hour spent in one of 
these low-cushioned chairs, talking with actresses 
robed in Royal raiment, makes one feel as if trans- 
ported to Fairy land. 

La Faustin suddenly remembered this, and rising 


144 THE COMÉDIE-FRANCAISE. 


from her bed went to the Comédie-Française to pass 
an hour or two in the Foyer des Acteurs. 

She sat in her walking dress with the strings of her 
hat untied, on a chair in the chimney corner, with her 
back to the old picture of Molière and with her elbow 
on one of those small harpsichords, stiff and straight 
in their lines, which figure in the representations of 
the Eighteenth century — in the Barber of Seville, for 
example. Although at first disinclined to go out, the 
actress had finally been obliged to do so by that im- 
perious necessity which compels a creator, after he 
has sent out into the world some great thing, to go to 
the places where he may hear his name spoken of — 
where he may learn that he occupies public attention 
— where in fact he may drink in sweet praise and 
flattery. 

That night a modern play was being enacted, written 
by an academician, preceded by one of Musset’s Prov- 
erbs, which had been represented hundreds of times. 
There were few people at the theatre, and the Foyer 
des Acteurs was almost deserted. 

In fact there were but three persons present. A 
magistrate who had a great liking to the place for its 
own sake, while paying general court to all the 
actresses there ; an old literary man who, after keeping 
himself warm at the public libraries all day came to the 
theatre at night in order to warm himself there ; and 
a Prussian savant who had been brought into fashion 
through the mania felt by our scientific world for 
German science, and who came wearing a cravat with 
rose-colored spots upon it. 


THE COMÉDIE-FRANC AISE. 145 

44 It is nevertheless true,” he said to the literary 
Frenchman, “ that one can really work only in seclu- 
sion. My amusement as a rule consists in playing on 
the piano in my attic when evening comes and I am 
tired of work. But old Haze persuaded me to come 
here, so I dressed myself like the rest of the world and 
came.” Then he stopped and looked down with an air 
of pride at his person ; but presently began again with 
a certain sadness in his tone : 

“ The worst of it is however, that I can never say 
the things that you Frenchmen say to women. I try, 
but my words are too gross, and then I stop, unable to 
finish my sentence.” 

Occasionally an actor would come in and going up to 
Juliette, would allude to the favorable criticisms that 
had appeared in the morning papers, but he added 
nothing from himself. Bressan t however, in his gay 
costume of Fantasio, took a seat on the other side 
of the fire-place and began to converse with warm .sym- 
pathy of the wonderful dramatic qualities she had dis- 
played the previous evening. 

But for these two, the Foyer would have been com- 
pletely empty. 

Then came a gentleman well known to the actress — 
a little dried up man — most carefully, fastidiously 
dressed, with a head shining like a billiard ball, of that 
insupportable dilettante type — a trumpeter of success- 
ful books, a showman of distinguished strangers, a man 
in fact, whose compliments, without any such intention 
on his part, wounded to the quick. He was tolerated 
9 


146 THE COMÉDIE-FRANCAISE. 


and forgiven, simply because his name was seen in all 
the newspapers as being at all the great funerals and 
weddings, and at all the first nights at the theatres. 

He came up to the actress, and bowed low before her, 
his head a little on one side, his two arms falling loose 
from the shoulder, and said in the most caressing 
voice : 

“ Do you know that your success of last night was 
a great surprise to me ? Really, I had no idea that you 
had it in you. Of course your success was undenia- 
ble, and everybody admits it. But as I told you, I did 
not expect it. The truth is I live among people who 
will not believe in your talent ; and I had heard so 
many doubts expressed that I witnessed your perform- 
ance with ever growing astonishment. Allow me to 
present a foreigner who has a passionate desire to make 
the acquaintance of our greatest actress.” 

He disappeared, only to return a few minutes later, 
bringing with him a Holland Admiral, who spoke our 
language so very badly that it was quite impossible for 
him to understand anything on the French stage except 
a pantomime. 

The dilettante and the Admiral were succeeded by 
two young attachés at one of the Embassies, immacu- 
lately dressed, who came up arm in arm and mur- 
mured in lisping, ecstatic tones : 

“ Divine ! Divine ! ” 

At last appeared an enthusiast ! This was a cele- 
brated surgeon, known for his passion for the theatre. 
He dashed into the Foyer like a ball from the mouth 


THE COMÉDIE-FRANCAISE. 147 


of a cannon, and all out of breath jerked out the 
following phrases to La Faustin : 

“ For your sake I threw over a wonderful operation 
at Bordeaux. Yes, I telegraphed to my patient, ‘Can’t 
come; La Faustin plays to-morrow.’ You were admi- 
rable! You outdid yourself! You were good all the 
way through ! ” 

La Faustin smiled faintly, and said: 

“ No, no ; there you are in error, my dear sir. I 
know perfectly well when I play well, and then I like 
to listen to myself. I am actress and public too at 
such times. Well, yesterday I had this feeling only 
occasionally.” 

“You were admirable all the w r ay through — all the 
way through ! ” repeated the surgeon, as he rushed 
away, obeying a voice that said : 

“ The curtain is going up, gentlemen ! ” 

Then, as the presence of La Faustin in the theatre 
became known, her friends and acquaintances hurried 
in to see her. She heard their praises with indiffer- 
ence ; not a word that had yet been said touched her 
very deeply. There were new visits and new protesta- 
tions, and finally, La Faustin having had enough of 
this flattery, was ready to depart. 


148 THE MARQUIS DE FONTEBISE. 


CHAPTER XIX. 


THE MARQUIS DE FONTEBISE. 
CTRESSES and actors of talent, are not touched 



Jl Jl by ordinary compliments from their friends. 
They ask for something original in the way of appre- 
ciation. They do not wish to hear glittering general- 
ities, they wish to be told in what sentence they made 
the most effective paint, and where they might have 
done better. They crave a discriminating criticism 
rather than flattery. From this very contempt which 
they feel for ordinary praise is born a confidence and 
faith in some few friends, two or three persons of 
taste who may be disagreeable and exacting, but whose 
judgment has such weight that a word of approbation 
from them is worth hours of fulsome homage from 


others. 


The day after this evening in the Foyer , Juliette 
went to call on one of these friends whom she had 
missed at the theatre the night of the first representa- 
tion of Phèdre. She stopped in La Rue Sainte 
Appoline before a little Hôtel built in the second half 
of the Eighteenth Century, near the Rampart, which 
was in a state of dilapidation, and looked as if no one 
lived in it. 

This Hôtel had no porter, and after ringing for at 


THE MARQUIS DE FONTEBISE. 149 

least ten minutes, an aged servant with the simple face 
of a lacquey in an old comedy, first inspected the 
visitor through a Judas, and then condescended to 
open a small door in the great porte cochés',. 

She passed through immense unfurnished rooms all 
finished in exquisite woods, with the accumulated dusts 
of ages thick upon it all. Everywhere there were 
doves among the roses, a graceful memorial of Made- 
moiselle Colombe, of the Comédie-Italienne, for whom 
this Hôtel had been built. 

La Faustin was shown to the room of the old Mar- 
quis de Fontebise, who, although it was one o’clock in 
the afternoon, was still in bed. 

His wig was on the table as well as a glass of water 
in which were his false teeth. The Marquis himself 
lay wrapped in a sheepskin. He wore a fur cap on his 
head. 

“ How was it that I did not see you at the theatre ? ” 
asked Juliette. 

“ I was there — ” 

“ Well?” 

“ My child, your conception was crude — crude to 
the last degree — thoroughly incomplete!” growled 
the Marquis. 

The Marquis de Fontebise was an old gentleman 
ruined by actresses. He had nothing left in the world 
but this little Hôtel which he had purchased in the 
last years of his splendor, and a tiny income which 
enabled him to keep one servant, a venerable Caleb, 
who was contented to receive the wages of a woman. 


150 THE MARQUIS DE FONTEBISE. 

He was looked upon as the last survivor of this Foyer 
of the Comédie-Française , which had as President, the 
inimitable Contât, and around whom were grouped 
Collin d’Harleville, the Marquis de Ximenes, Andrieux- 
Picard, Vigeé, Alexandre Duval, Ducis and Legouvé. 

Every evening, either at the Theatre-Française or at 
the Odéon, at a tragedy or a comedy, one was sure of 
seeing him. Gifted with the wonderful memory of the 
old people of the last century, he knew his classics by 
heart, and involuntarily prompted himself at the theatre 
when the prompter was a little behind hand, and he could 
describe to you the gradual development of a rôle; and 
he would tell how such and such a gesture had first 
been produced by accident ; he could give the very date 
when certain changes had been made. He could also 
imitate the exact intonation with which all the most 
celebrated passages had been given by the most famous 
actors and actresses of the last sixty years. 

He had made himself an absolute authority in these 
traditions which he defended with angry vehemence. 
His feeble rage often amused his hearers. Actors con- 
sulted him, debutântes asked him to permit him to 
recite their parts to him. He received them lying in 
his bed, for he only rose for his dinner and to go to 
the theatre. 

Through his passion for actresses the Marquis de 
Fontebise had been looked upon all these many years 
as a disinterested lover of dramatic art. 

He had been the first to discover La Faustin. When 
she had made her debût at a wretched little theatre, he 


THE MARQUIS DK FONTEBISE. 151 

had taken varions journalists to see her play, had 
talked of her and praised her, and finally procured an 
engagement for her at the Odéon. In short the old 
Marquis had employed in the service of the youthful 
Juliette Faustin, the zeal, energy, and activity of the 
discoverer and teacher. 

This protection and patronage however were not 
without thorns, for the old Marquis was especially lavish 
of reproof, lectures and fault finding. One of his 
favorite reproofs was “wooden head” and sometimes 
when displeased at the manner with which some 
favorite passage was rendered he would suddenly, 
overcome with senile irascibility, throw at the head of 
his pupil anything that was conveniently at hand. 

The Marquis lay on his back, the two corners of the 
pillow brought around over his ears. Among the soiled 
and tumbled sheets appeared his bushy eyebrows, his 
despotic aquiline nose, and his yellow eyes looking at 
the actress with an angry, discontented expression. 

La Faustin tried to defend herself by saying in an 
humble tone. 

“ Ah ! Monsieur le Marquis, the rôle is really — ” 

“ Look out what you say about the rôle,” interrupted 
the old gentleman. 

“ I must say what I think, there never was an actress 
born who could play the part of Phèdre as it ought to 
be played. It is not my fault that I can’t do it, it is 
the fault of Racine. I have all confidence in him, and 
should like to give myself up to his guidance entirely 
and abandon myself to his inspiration, but he deceives 
me — there are in Phèdre two women in one. 


152 THE MARQUIS DE FONTEBISE. 

“ Pshaw ! you only repeat the words of the 4 Grand 
Roi,’ that Champmeslé and D’Ennebaut should play 
the part together. Look here, my child,” continued 
the old Marquis, “there is no use in disguising it, 
there were times when your voice was perfectly 
unsympathetic.” 

“I know it,” answered Juliette, sadly. “I had it 
right once ; one day when I rehearsed our favorite pas- 
sages in my own salon — but afterwards I could never 
get it again, never, no matter how hard I tried.” And 
she added in a still more melancholy tone. “We can 
say certain things better one time than another, by 
reason of the mood we are in.” 

“ Not at all ; it is because you won’t work. The 
actresses of the nineteenth century do not know the 
meaning of work and study. I know very well that 
six minutes' study is considered quite enough for four 
verses, and I believed you had just that idea when I 
heard you recite those two lines — 

“ ‘Pour en développer l’embarras incertain 
Ma sœur du fil fatal, eut armé votre main.* 

“ Why is there so much in these two lines ! ” cried 
the actress, despairingly. Starting from her seat she 
began to pace the room with animation. “Why did 
not the poet finish them ? 

“ ‘ Par vous aurait péri le monstre de la Crète 
Malgré tous les détours de sa vaste retraité.’ 

44 Why after the harmonious finale of these two 
feminine rhymes should these two masculine ones 


THE MARQUIS DE FONTEBISE. 153 

follow ? Why did he forget that the theatrical style 
should be exclusively manufactured for pantomime ? 
It is a fault that Racine has committed, the only one I 
know. At all events, you may say what you please, 
Marquis, but these two verses do not suggest nor 
encourage gestures.” 

“ Hush ! or I will throw my wig in your face,” 
shouted the Marquis. “The idea of your having the 
presumption to sit in judgment on the masters! You 
are an idiot, an idiot with some little genius at times 
I admit, but you don’t know it yourself, and all the 
rest of the year you are a mere wooden head. Yes, a 
mere wooden head.” 

“As you are in such an excitable humor, my dear 
friend, I am going away. Another day — ” 

“ Listen, my child,” said the old man, turning 
tender, fatherly eyes upon her. “I am not pleased 
with you, there is something lacking in you, the epic 
flame of great passions. I don’t know though, it may 
be that no such great passions exist nowadays, the 
flame is doubtless dead. All is so intensely bourgeois 
and commonplace now. You live a quiet, lazy life, 
and you live with some man as comfortably as if 
he were your husband. In my day things were vastly 
different, the actresses of my time knew what a grande 
passion meant. But one thing is very certain as 
regards yourself, which is, that there is no smell of 
gunpowder, and Phèdre played like that won’t do — 
won’t do at all.” 

Then the old man paused. His eyes were half 


154 THE MARQUIS DE FONTEBISE. 

closed, but they opened widely enough when La 
Faustin, thinking he was asleep, rose to depart. 

“ Let me give you a bit of advice,” said the Mar- 
quis, just as Juliette closed the door. “Find a lover 
who beats you, and whom you love — then, and not 
until then, may you hope to play Phèdre.” 

As La Faustin walked through the dilapidated 
rooms, followed by the decrepit valet, her face was 
that of a little girl who had been lectured, and Juli- 
ette could not refrain from a smile when she thought 
of the singular advice given by the old Marquis. 


A BATH ROOM. * 


155 


CHAPTER XX. 

A BATH ROOM. 

I T was three o’clock when La Faustin, who was to 
play Phèdre that night for the second time, went 
to take her bath. 

Juliette’s bath room — the porcelain room as Guena- 
gaud called it — was the only place that she had not 
given up to Blancheron’s upholsterers. She found 
great amusement in arranging it. With her own per- 
sonal tastes and an unlimited expenditure of money, 
she made a very bewitching place of it. She said— 
for she was in the habit of spending at least an hour 
each day in the bath — that the eyes needed something 
pretty to look upon. She ordered, therefore, twenty- 
four large panels of Faience, which entirely covered 
the walls. On these tiles were painted birds among 
foliage, running streams, tall reeds and water lilies 
floating on deep pools. The floor of the bath room 
represented grass and turf under fruit trees over which 
a high wind had scattered white and rosy petals. 

The seats were of Japanese porcelain. The ceiling 
was very original ; the center was of plate glass set in 
squares of carved wood. The glass itself was the 
color of the sky, and on this was painted flowers, 
such as those that brightened Italian salons of the 


156 


. A BATH ROOM. 


Nineteenth Century. These paintings had been exe- 
cuted by a wonderful decorator who had unfortunately 
fallen a victim to his passion for absinthe. La Faustin 
had been able to obtain them only by keeping the man 
a prisoner for a month under her own roof. 

These painted squares of glass had a border running 
all around the room of Baccarat crystal cut in innu- 
merable facets which reflected the light. 

In the center of the room was an immense jardinière 
of copper, as bright as gold, in which grew a white 
lilac, an actual tree. This tree was renewed every 
winter, and as soon as it had blossomed was removed 
and other flowers substituted. 

But the article in the room most deserving of the 
admiration of an elegant woman was the bath itself, of 
dead white faience, decorated with running periwinkle 
and its purple blossoms. This was one of the only two 
bath tubs of this size that had come safely out of the 
enormous kiln built by an unfortunate man who was 
ruined by it, for the purpose of baking pieces of extra- 
ordinary size. The other bath tub is at the Musée 
de Sèvres. The faucets through which ran the hot 
and cold water were the necks of swans done in silver 
after models in wax left by Possat, the young and 
talented Decorative sculptor, who died at an early age. 

On a chair of straw, as fine as a cigar case from 
Manilla, was a dressing-gown of old guipure lace, lined 
with white flannel, its falling folds half concealing a 
pair of slippers made of the wings of humming birds. 

La Faustin had been in her bath at least three quar- 


A BATH ROOM. 


157 


ters of an hour. It was the same day that she had 
been to call on the Marquis de Fontebise. 

She was thinking over what she had accomplished. 
She had had plenty of admiration, a veritable ovation, 
and yet she was not satisfied with herself. It seemed 
to her that she had not succeeded in carrying out lier 
own ideas. She had played with all the resources of 
her talents, and yet she was haunted in the most pro- 
voking manner by a shriek which had been uttered 
one night, b} r a second-rate artist, in the character of 
a consumptive invalid. This shriek was appallingly 
real, because the actress was a little of a consumptive 
herself. 

While Juliette was reasoning out her conclusions 
from these premises, Guenagaud entered with a card 
for her mistress, saying that the gentleman was below 
and wished to know at what hour and what day she 
would receive him. 

La Faustin read the card. 

LORD ANNANDALE. 

“Lord Annandale” she said, “I don’t know him, I 
have not the least idea who he is! ” 

“ Madame may not know him but I do,” answered 
the woman, “it is Monsieur William Rayne ! ” 

“ William Rayne, did you say, William Rayne ? 
Ah ! now I remember, Annandale was the name of his 
father. Show him in.” 

Trembling with emotion, La Faustin, hastilj 7 rising 
from her bath, thrust her feet into her slippers, and 


158 


A BATH ROOM. 


wrapping her dressing gown about her, hastened into 
her boudoir. 

The young man was in deep mourning. Advancing 
respectfully he dropped on one knee and kissed the 
white hand extended by J uliette, not so much for him 
to take, as to ward off an apparition of which she was 
afraid. 

“ It is I, Juliette, no ghost, but myself in the flesh. I 
have so much to tell you. Your letters have all reached 
me, and I know that you love me still ! ” 

“ Can it be possible ? ” murmured La Faustin in an 
awed whisper, “can it be really you, William?” and 
La Faustin tenderly touched his cheek as if to satisfy 
herself of the reality of his presence, and when he 
wanted to talk she placed her hand over his mouth. 

“No, no!” she murmured, “do not speak to me, I 
want to look at you now, and the sound of your voice 
disturbs me.” 

Guenagaud came hurriedly in. 

“ Madame,” she said in a low, frightened whisper, 
“ Monsieur Blancheron wishes to see you, he says he 
must see you for a moment.” 

Juliette’s fair brow contracted; she looked as if 
roughly awakened from a happy dream. 

“ Tell Monsieur Blancheron that I cannot see him, 
that I am engaged with this gentleman ! ” 

And when Guenagaud hesitated, her mistress con- 
tinued in an imperious tone, “Go, and do as I bid 
you ! ” 

When Guenagaud had departed, the actress made a 


A BATH ROOM. 


159 


sign to William to take a seat by her side. Then with 
her arms folded across her bosom, and her face turned 
away to conceal happy tears, she, in silent rapture, 
listened to the words and voice for which her aching 
heart had longed. 

“ Why should I care, said La Faustin, when I am 
so happy? But it is four o’clock, you must go. Come 
to the theatre to-night for me. Guenagaud will give 
you a ticket for my box, but you must go now.” 

And as William went out of the room La Faustin 
called him back. 

“My Lord,” she said, “to-night La Faustin will 
play for you, — for you alone — do you understand ? ” 


160 


THE LOGE GRILLÉE. 


CHAPTER XXL 

THE LOGE GRILLÉE. 

W HEN La Faustin reached the theatre she found 
that a long queue had already formed, reach- 
ing around the corner and even into la Rue de Mon - 
pensieur , a noisy vociferous queue, which was not 
disposed to be very patient. 

Paris was carried away by an ardent curiosity in 
regard to this second representation, by reason of the 
discussions which had arisen after the first. Some 
persons placed the new actress above Rachel, while 
others declared that her natural talents were of a very 
low order ; others again said that she had been well 
drilled, that she was a wonderful instrument played 
upon by the old Marquis de Fontebise, that she had 
herself no sentiment but was an apt pupil. For days 
this had been the subject of discussion in cafés, clubs 
and drawing-rooms. 

Apropos of this début a discussion had began in the 
Journals as to the propriety of galvanizing dead trage- 
dies with the assistance of effects known in modern 
dramas, to play, in fact, as the actress of the Odéon 
had the intelligence to play. 

And all Paris, therefore, repaired to the Theâtre- 
Français to sit in judgment upon the actress. 


THE LOGE GRILLÉE. 


161 


La Faustin entered her dressing-room and began to 
recite her part with breathless impatience. Her watch 
lay on the dressing-table before her, and her ear was 
keenly alive to the murmur in the house that reached 
her like the ever increasing rush of waters preceding 
an inundation. 

Contrary to her habits, the actress, before she was 
summoned, was on the stage with her eye at the hole 
in the curtain. Indifferent to the celebrities seated 
before her, to the fashion and beauty of the house, as 
well as to the severe faces of the orchestra and the 
eager public who awaited her appearance, she looked 
only at a loge grillée, her own, where she but faintly 
distinguished a form. 

The few minutes preceding the rising of the curtain 
were very trying ones to her. She began to think 
that her eyes had deceived her, and that the box was 
empty. The idea that Lord Annandale might not be 
there, might not come, made her feel sick and faint. 
And when, as she went upon the stage, the actress 
had to say: 

“N’ allons point plus avant. Demeurous, chère Œnone, 

Je ne me soutiens plus; ma force m’abandonne.” 

La Faustin murmured these lines in almost a dying 
voice, and in a tone so deeply touching, that all those 
among her audience who loved, instinctively turned to 
look in each other’s eyes. And Racine’s words not 
only told the public how the wife of Theseus loved, 
but also told William how Juliette Faustin had loved 
and could love. When she spoke of the forests of 
10 


162 THE LOGE GRILLÉE. 

Greece he knew that she meant the forests of Scot- 
land. Every word she uttered was so evidently ad- 
dressed to the little loge grillée that the eyes of half 
the audience were riveted on that shadowy recess 
within which a stranger’s face was dimly seen. 

William went to the dressing-room of the actress 
after the first act, to congratulate her. She sent him 
away, saying: 

“Do not come again; I do not wish to see you 
among these indifferent people. You may wait for 
me in my carriage after the play is over.” 

In the second act, during the declaration of her 
passion, so great w’as Juliette’s emotion that her voice 
failed her entirely. But the audience did not know 
this, and in her choked utterance, her gasp and sud- 
den pause, they saw only her wonderful inspiration, 
and in all probability these famous words had never 
before made so great an impression upon an audience. 

During this act and the following ones it was still 
to William that she continued to address herself. 
William knew this, and every intonation thrilled to 
his heart. 

The actress scarce noticed the enthusiastic and long- 
repeated bravos she elicited. She heard none of them 
and noticed nothing, neither the orchestra stalls, the 
boxes, gallery nor amphitheatre. She had eyes only 
for two white-gloved hands that she saw on the edge 
of the loge grillée. 

La Faustin played as she had promised Lord Annan- 
dale, for him alone; thus, according to her lover, the 


THE LOGE GRILLÉE. 163 

highest satisfaction of gratified pride which can be 
offered to the man who loves an actress. 

The representation continued to the ever-increasing 
admiration of the audience, and at the same time to 
the surprise and astonishment of those who had been 
present on the first occasion. 

It was no longer the Phèdre, the too sensual Phèdre 
of the previous evening, the Phèdre of Euripides, it 
was Racine’s Phèdre, the dove wounded unto death. 


164 


SUPPER FOR TWO. 


CHAPTER XXII. 

SUPPER FOR TWO. 

“TTOME, Ranaud, and drive slowly,” said La Faus- 
XI tin to her coachman. 

La Faustin seated herself at William’s side, the very 
rustle of her silk skirts speakin.g of her happiness. 
Neither of the two spoke, they were enjoying the 
delight of being alone with each other in the silence 
and darkness of a luxurious coupé. 

Under the gas lights as they drove, William caught a 
glimpse of her violet eyes full of serene contentment, 
and as he held her slender fingers in his he felt all the 
wonderful magnetism of her presence. 

When they reached the second floor of the Hôtel in 
la Rue Godot-de-Mauroi — and William stopped — the 
actress said: 

“Not here, my friend, we will go higher. We will 
sup in the cabin.” 

“ And the people whom Madame invited ? ” cried 
Guenagaud, despairingly, as she rushed out of the 
dining-room to meet her mistress, in time to hear these 
words. 

“ Oh ! they may sup without me Î You can tell 
them that I have gone to Havre, that I wanted to see 
the storm announced for to-night.” 


SUPPER FOR TWO. 


165 


Preceding her lover, La Faustin showed him to the 
upper floor, and into a room where the furniture was 
of white pine varnished, the curtains white muslin, and 
the whole appearance that of a young girl’s chamber. 

“ This is my own especial den, where I come to learn 
my rôles, and where I put a dear friend from the coun- 
try, when she comes to spend a few days with me.” 

Before the chimney, in which sparkled a bright wood 
fire, was a small table on wdiich was placed a basket of 
grapes, a plate of shrimps, a cold partridge, and a 
bottle of champagne. A supper such as a student 
shares with a grisette . 

William laughed. 

“ No one would suppose,” he said, “ to look around 
this room, that you were the greatest actress on the 
face of the earth ! ” 

“ Never mind that to-night,” said La Faustin, as she 
vanished through a door into a dressing room. 

William stood by the fire and looked about the 
room — everything was fresh and pure and sweet. The 
delightful, healthful odor of resinous pine filled the 
room, and he was glad that he saw nothing of the 
luxury that characterized the apartments below. 

La Faustin appeared in a very few minutes wearing 
a dressing-gown and tiny lace cap, which Lord Annan- 
dale instantly recognized as those worn by Juliette in 
Scotland when they sat on the balcony of the château 
watching the ghostly forms of the white peacocks in 
the moonlight. 

“ Yes, I kept them — I kept them for you,” said La 


166 


SUPPER FOR TWO. 


Faustin, releasing herself from William’s detaining 
arms, “ and now to supper, my Lord I ” 

The two lovers seated themselves at the small table, 
and unhampered by the presence of servants they 
began their supper. The thrill caused by the acci- 
dental touching of their hands as they served each 
other, the mingled tenderness and gayety, all caused 
them to forget what had taken place since last they 
had met, and took them back to the early days of their 
love. 

From time to time, as their supper went on, La 
Faustin laid down her fork and gazed upon her lover 
with the rapt expression of a religieuse , such as one 
sees in pictures, and murmured with something of the 
admiration of a man for a woman, and with a long- 
<irawn sigh : 

“ You are wonderfully handsome, my Lord ! ” 

And he was handsome, this young Lord Annandale, 
handsome, from the melancholy tenderness of his dark 
blue eyes, handsome from the silky crispness of his 
hair and his beard, handsome from the clear com- 
plexion which is seen in perfection only among English- 
men, handsome from his slender but manly figure, and 
aristocratic looking, as he, the descendant of generations 
of the best blood of England had a right to be. 

It was a curious and delightful spectacle to see the 
happy confusion and embarrassment of this man on 
receiving this flattering homage from this woman, 
before whom all Paris had bowed not an hour before. 

He could not speak; words failed this foreigner in 


SUPPER FOR TWO. 167 

the presence of all this gracious flattery, which could 
only have come from the lips of a Frenchwoman. 

When supper was over Juliette took a cigarette, 
lighted it, and after drawing one puff placed it between 
his lips. 

“And now, my Lord,” she said, “tell me your 
adventures ; I want to know everything that has taken 
place since we parted ! ” 

William then told how his father, fearing the conse- 
quences of his love for her, had sent in his son’s 
resignation to the Belgian Legation, and had obtained 
the position for him of First Secretary to the Viceroy 
of India. William told how all this was done in a 
very brief space of time, and with the stern authority 
which in the aristocratic families of England fathers 
still exercise over their sons. 

The young man told how he had written to Juliette, 
and how a servant in the employment of his father, 
who was devoted to the interests of that father, had 
intercepted the letter. Then he became desperate 
and departed for India, where he had spent what 
appeared to him a century. 

“ And the black tiger ? ” 

“ What do you know about that ? It was only a 
scratch. An insignificant wound greatly exaggerated 
by the newspapers.” 

“ Let me see the scar ; show it to me ! ” and La 
Faustin pushed up her lover’s sleeve. 

“ Nonsense, child ! ” said Annandale, holding her 
hands in a firm but gentle grasp. 


168 


SUPPER FOR TWO. 


He continued, “ Finally, at the end of three years I 
heard of my father’s death. I came back to England. 
I found all your letters in a sealed envelope directed to 
me. It was at this very time that this paper announced 
your approaching début at the Comédie Française. But 
business matters made it absolutely impossible for me 
to get away from England, and I could not get to 
Paris until the day after your first appearance as 
Phèdre.” Then Juliette threw herself on the floor at 
Annandale’s feet, and with her arms folded on his 
knees she looked into his eyes : 

“Tell me,” she said, “about the women in that 
part of the world ! ” 

“ The Bayaderes ? ” answered Lord Annandale, in a 
tqne of ironical admiration, “ oh ! they are pretty crea- 
tures with delicate features and slender bronze feet, 
dressed in shining gauze, with hands laden with rings 
and arms with bracelets, and with jewels through their 
noses.” 

“ Yes, but in spite of the noses, my dear Lord, you 
have loved these women, I am sure.” 

“No, Juliette,” answered the Englishman, “I have 
loved only your portrait, although I believed myself 
forgotten by you I ” 


A LETTER. 


169 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

A LETTER. 

T HE two lovers were breakfasting, seated at the 
same table where they had supped the previous 
evening, when Guenagaud entered and laid before 
La Faustin a letter bearing a city postmark. 

La Faustin opened the letter, read it with eyes 
unnaturally distended, and exclaimed : 

“ Ah ! I am free at last ! ” 

She then handed the letter with almost a solemn 
air to William. 

This is the letter : 

Vereflay,— Evening. 

Juliette: — To kill Lord Annandale would not 
restore you to me, would it? Well then, as there is no 
Juliette for me in the future I am about to kill myself. 
But I do not wish the odium of my death to fall 
upon you. 

By the time this letter reaches you, I shall have been 
cut in two, having fallen from a car and been run over 
by two passing trains. You need not be in the least 
disturbed. I have studied the place, and you know 
that I am a practical man. Mine will seem to have 
been a natural death, and one with which you have 
had no concern, nor need you fear to read this letter 


170 


A LETTER. 


to the end, Juliette, I have no reproaches to make to 
you. 

In my childhood I was poor — my youth was one of 
privations. As I grew older I knew myself to be plain 
and uninteresting. The only happy years of my life 
I owe to you, and I thank you. 

I have loved no other human being than yourself 
and a poor dog that you have seemed to like. You are 
too proud to receive the legacy of my fortune, but you 
will accept poor Dick ; and when I am d}dng it will be 
sweet to me to think that when I am dead this little 
animal beloved by both of us — will be upon your knees 
and will be sometimes caressed by your gentle hand. 

Farewell, 

Blancheron. 

Annandale’s eyes turned from this letter to Juliette’s 
face, and he was literally terrified to see how slight were 
the roots taken by this old love in this woman’s heart. 

“ This man loved you sincerely,” said Lord Annan- 
dale, with a touch of pathos in his voice. “ I will send 
for the dog to-day.” 


A NEW RESIDENCE. 


171 


CHAPTER XXIV. 


A NEW RESIDENCE. 



FEW hours later Lord Annandale and La Faustin, 


J-JL preceded by the concièrge went over one of the 
large Hotels in la Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré , 
which happened to be for sale. 

The young Lord marched through the rooms hardly 
looking about, absorbed apparently in thought, and 
indifferent to exterior things. The remarks of the 
concièrge on the height of the ceilings, the quality of 
the wood carvings, extracted from the English visitor 
only a slight lifting of the eyelids. 

They entered the dining-room, where the shutters 
were closed. Opening one of them the concièrge 
pushed aside a branch of a tree, and there came a 
frightened flutter among the leaves. 

“Birds!” said Lord Annandale with uplifted finger 
and an expression of surprise and delight on his 
brightening face. 

Then the Englishman relapsed into his phlegmatic 
indifference, to the great discouragement of the con- 


cièrge, 


This poor man suddenly exclaimed : 

“ Excuse me, I forgot to show you this room ! ” and 
he opened a door that led into a very comfortable bath 


172 


A NEW RESIDENCE. 


room, in which was a great tub of marble, white but 
ordinary in quality. 

“ Bath ! ” said Lord Annandale, as if greatly amazed 
by the delightful appearance of some unexpected ob- 
ject. He stood for a few minutes with his hands behind 
him, in smiling contemplation of this treasure. When 
lie looked up he saw that La Faustin had fled down 
the corridor. He hastened after her, noticing that her 
shoulders were shaking convulsively. He overtook 
her and said, uneasily : 

“What is the matter, Juliette?” 

La Faustin, with her handkerchief over her mouth, 
was doing her best to restrain an outburst of uproarious 
laughter, and could only say: 

“ Don’t talk to me now, I beg of you ! ” 

Only the stables remained now to be seen. The 
concièrge, encouraged to talk by the excellent impres- 
sion produced on the stranger by the bath^ opened his 
lips to boast of the number of stalls, but his voice 
failed him when he saw the contempt depicted on the 
face of the English Lord. The look which the Condé 
who built the stables at Chantilly might have thrown 
on the stable of a respectable bourgeois of his time, 
might have been like that with which Lord Annandale 
surveyed the one belonging to the Hôtel. He simply 
gave it one glance through the half open door and 
turned on his heel, leaving the concièrge utterly con- 
founded at the oddity of this Englishman’s behavior. 

“Now you must let me laugh,” said Juliette, as she 
made room for her lover at her side in the carriage. 


A NEW RESIDENCE. 


173 


44 Birds ! ” and she imitated the gesture made by Lord 
Annandale. “ Bath ! ” and she put her hands behind 
her, her facile features assuming the beatified expres- 
sion with which he had gazed upon the bath. 

“ Do you know,” she cried, amid her choking laugh- 
ter, “ that these are the only two words you uttered 
while we were inside that Hôtel? Upon my word, 
you are too droll ! To think that among all those 
things you saw but two ! Is it on account of the birds 
and the bath that you propose to buy that Hôtel ? ” 

And again yielding to her laughter the actress threw 
herself back in her carriage. She looked like a school 
girl in her little round hat, all made of peacock 
feathers. 

Lord Annandale was at first considerably discon- 
certed, but after a few moments he began to laugh 
also, saying very nicely: 

“ It is true that I was very English just now. I 
admit it. But you know that with us in the purchase 
of a house, even if it be in a town, we look for a tree 
or two and a blade of green grass. These birds told 
me instantly that there were such things there. As to 
the bath-room, that of course appealed to the mania 
for ‘tubbing’ that characterizes our nation. I was 
somewhat astonished to find a bath-room in a French 
house. But now we will forget the birds and the bath, 
and if you have finished laughing, you will tell me if 
you are inclined to live in that Hôtel ? ” 

“ I should be exceedingly unreasonable did I refuse. 
It is one of the finest houses in Paris.” 


174 


A NEW RESIDENCE. 


“ I think it is very well, but the especial reason why 
I like it is, that there is ground enough for me to j 
double the size of the stables, should I decide to buy \ 
it. Then, too, I can have a porter inside as in Lon- 
don. I can enclose the wide steps and build his loge 
on one side. As the Hôtel pleases you, perhaps you 
can make your arrangements to take possession of it 
to-morrow.” 

“To-morrow? Do you not know that in France 
there are certain formalities which take time before 
such a purchase can be made ? ” 

“The house is to let or to be sold, is it not? I 
shall buy it, and my man of business will attend to 
the matter at once.” 


A L’ANGLAISE. 


175 


CHAPTER XXV. 

A L’ANGLAISE. 

A MONTH had elapsed, and the actress was living 
in the Hôtel much as if she had been living 
there for years. It had been refurnished, improved 
and changed. Its whole aspect was that of a London 
house, with a numerous staff of servants. 

In the veranda was the porter’s lodge, inhabited by 
an august being, whose only duty was to touch the 
bells which communicated with the stables, the kitchen 
and the hall. In an ante-room was a small table, 
on which stood an inkstand, portfolio and silver 
tray used in carrying notes and cards. Here sat a 
footman with his hair not powdered like the coachman, 
but done with blanc cTEpagne . The chair he sat in 
was high-backed and had wide arms of a shape that 
came into use when London servants first began to sit 
up half the night, awaiting the return of their masters 
from the House of Lords, and on a consoll table stood 
the master’s hat, a hat-brush and clothes-brush, a walk- 
ing-stick and a pair of gloves all stretched and ready 
to put on. 

On the other side of the door was the parlor, a 
business room in which to receive people who were not 
on an equality with the master — tradespeople, lawyers 
and doctors. 


176 


l’anglaise. 


For the table there was an entire regiment of ser- 
vants all under the charge and command of a butler, 
who himself carried the keys of the cellar and wore 
no livery. 

Then there was the secretary, who paid the bills and 
took the receipts. 

There was also my Lord’s valet, a man who spoke 
two or three languages — Italian and German — but 
rarely French. He was the confidential servant and 
the courier when travelling. There was “ the boy,” a 
fellow of about eighteen, who fulfilled the duties of 
page about La Faustin. There were also a vast num- 
ber of female servants under the direction of a 
housekeeper — a matron in black silk — and a second 
femme de chambre whom Guenagaud, however, did not 
allow to usurp her duties; a dozen, at least, of chamber 
maids, wearing caps, and in the kitchen were six more 
robust looking creatures, with big, white arms. 

The stables were under the control of the head 
groom, a stern and imperative personage, who was 
empowered to purchase horses. He had a carriage 
and one horse for himself; there was Lord Annandale’s 
coachman and the coachman of La Faustin. Beside 
these three dignitaries there was a perfect swarm of 
grooms who whistled as they rubbed down the shining 
coats of the horses. 

The porter had been selected for his height. The 
footman in the ante-room for his fine figure and 
handsome face. 

Each servant had his own especial duty on which 


l’an glaise. 


177 


none of the others infringed. These duties were per- 
formed with the regularity of automatons, and the 
changing of the plates and dishes were as the celebra- 
tion of some religious rite, so solemn were the faces of 
the servants, the etiquette and stateliness reminding 
one of a scene in the dressing-room of Louis Quatorze. 

The change from her bourgeois life to this aristo- 
cratic existence did not disturb La Faustin in the 
least, her vanity was not especially gratified nor was 
she particularly pleased. 

The actress was accustomed to palaces on the stage 
and in her character there was also a good deal of the 
gamin ; she was more disposed to ridicule the favors of 
fortune than to be astonished at them. She felt of 
course a certain interest in watching the shifting of 
the scenes and the stage set for a new act. She liked 
the “ queerness ” of it all but she was not in the least 
elated. 

11 


178 


TETE-A-TETE S. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 


TET E-A-T ETES, 


A FAUSTIN and Lord Annandale appeared to- 



I J gether in the Bois and at the races ; they were 
seen at the theatre, and at all the charitable balls and 
fetês — appearing in fact at all those places where 
money could take them. 

But all this publicity ended when they crossed their 
own threshold. In London a man who lives such a 
life never receives any of his friends under his roof. 

Lord Annandale had become to a certain extent 
contented in his habits ; he went out with La Faustin, 
but adhered to his national habits so far that he could 
not make up his mind to bring into his home either his 
friends or his relatives. 

Therefore no one was ever seated at the table around 
which so many servants hovered, except La Faustin 
and Lord Annandale, and the doors of the Hôtel 
opened only for an hour or two after breakfast, to 
guests who were at once shown out to the stables, for 
Annandale could not resist the temptation of showing 
his English horses to his compatriots, and of under- 
valuing in poor French, the horses he saw in Paris. 

There was therefore between Lord Annandale and 
La Faustin, an unending tête-à-tête from morning until 
night. A tête-à-tête of which neither had got weary. 


THE ACTRESS. 


179 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE ACTRESS. 

L A FAUSTIN was of medium height, rather under 
than over it, she was slender and beautifully 
made, possessing the rare beauty of sloping shoulders. 
Slender as she was, her neck and arms were dimpled. 
Her complexion was clear and bright. A soft rose 
color in her cheeks, but her limbs and body were white 
like marble, a whiteness that is more often seen in 
a brunette than in a blonde. Her hair of a warm 
chestnut color, her forehead broad and intelligent, a 
dainty nose in which there was not the smallest sug- 
gestion of tragedy, and a mouth tender and sweet, if 
at times a trifle ironical, made a very charming face. 
Occasionally the lips would remain parted in a fixed 
smile. Her features were regular and thoroughly 
Parisian, mobile and altogether fascinating. 

Her eyes were gray, or rather they were of an unde- 
finable shade, reminding one of the color of a wave as 
the sea comes tumbling in at twilight, eyes that were 
full of shadows and equally full of light — eyes that 
became black under the influence of excitement, but 
which were blue as the skies when she was happy or 
pleased. 

The movements, too, of this marvellous woman were 


180 


THE ACTRESS. 


graceful and characterized by the elasticity of a rope 
dancer, while every pose was that of a Greek statue. 

But the especial quality of this woman was tho origi- 
nality of her nature, she had all the charm of the 
unexpected. She received from all things and all 
people, especial impressions which she expressed in 
the most unusual phraseology — phraseology that no 
other woman but herself would ever have thought of 
employing. 

She saw, she felt, she loved, in a manner peculiar 
to herself. 

Women of bourgeois birth and education generally 
think and feel alike. Under the influence of similar 
exterior influences, women in the upper circles of 
society are apt to feel the same repulsions, same ten- 
dernesses, and same prejudices — to endure even sim- 
ilar attacks of the nerves, which seem to have been 
described and laid down as a rule for the entire class. 

With them all the first impulses of the heart are 
always amended and subjected to the same comme 
il faut despotism which tends to efface all personality. 

These women, even the most intelligent, have their 
ideas ail formed in advance on every thing in the 
world, formed by certain rules and recipes definitely 
declared. They dare not in any way step to the 
right or the left of these regulations, for on no account 
would they appear to be singular or eccentric. 

The result of this method of education is, therefore, 
that these women are despairingly uniform, and that 
they bring to their lovers and their husbands nothing 
that can arouse them from their apathy. 


THE ACTRESS. 


181 


In these simple facts, you have the explanation of 
many intimacies existing between men of the upper 
circles of society, and women of the lower. 

La Faustin was a creature of infinite variety. She 
was a thorough daughter of the people and prided 
herself on so being. She liked to go among them, she 
loved their crudities, their fairs, their fêtes, and their 
fireworks. 

Growing up as she had among them, her impressions 
were more natural, and she gave way without restraint 
to her gayet} r which was not in the least like the tem- 
porary and nervous excitement of women of the world, 
but the natural effervescence of her blood. So remark- 
able was this gayety of hers that it had the effect of 
champagne on all about her, and made them, too, 
talkative and even witty. 

And if, like all women, she had days when she was 
conscious of nerves, these hours were brief and she was 
soon herself again. 

But while a creature of the people in one side of her 
character, La Faustin was at the same time a creature 
endowed by Nature with aristocratic tastes and ways, 
instincts which came to her, she knew not whence, and 
which are not always found in people born amid all 
these elegances. 

In one breath she would utter a most risquée phrase 
and in the next a sentence couched in most elegant 
terms. For example, if she took it into her head as she 
had done at her sister’s, to drink a glass of liquorice 
water — bought of a man on the corner of the street, 


182 


THE ACTRESS. 


she drank it from a Venetian glass goblet. She was 
in short, a being full of contradictions — a Duchess 
and grisette combined. 

There were transformations, metamorphoses, sudden 
transfigurations, through all of which the woman made 
herself beloved. Her very caprices and follies were 
peculiar to herself. Her thoughts were expressed in 
picturesque language, in words which she frequently 
coined for the occasion. Her ignorance all this time 
was simply incredible ; she never hesitated to avow it, 
and to avow it with such delightful frankness that 
she was more charming than ever. 

One day La Faustin was writing a letter to her man- 
ager; William was looking over her shoulder, and 
pointed out to her several faults of orthography, beg- 
ging her to take another sheet and begin again, but the 
actress shook her head, and in an adorably obstinate 
little way said; No ! no! it must go as it is — it is much 
more natural ! ” 

And the woman who wrote so badly, who spelled her 
words like a woman of the last century, expressed her- 
self divinely. No one surpassed her in the elegance of 
her manners — her reception of guests was a study, and 
she had the happy faculty of making the people about 
her not only content with her, but with themselves. 


THE WOMAN. 


183 


CHAPTER XXVIII. • 

THE WOMAN. 

L A FAUSTIN had moreover, for those men who 
knew her well — one especial fascination — she pos- 
sessed that tact which enabled her to discover in these 
men a merit, a charm, and a distinction of which they 
were themselves entirely ignorant, and for which discov- 
ery they were as grateful to her as if she herself had 
endowed them with this distinction, merit and charm. 

She was in fact gifted with that rare and delicate 
perception which instantly discovers the hidden good 
in a nature, as well as those various attractions which, 
trifles as they may be, are often those which first 
awaken interest. 

It might be the tones of a voice, the beauty of a 
smile or a hand that she was the first to detect. And 
at this discovery of some delightful physiological or 
of psychological detail in those she loved, La Faustin 
became as enthusiastic as about some picture or 
statue, and uttered delightful little coaxing words like 
caresses. And her passion for the elegances of life in 
little things was so great that she was quite capable of 
thinking, and persuading some man to think, that he 
was of a superior order of beings, because he had 
dressed a salad at her table in an especially delicious 
manner. 


184 


THE WOMAN. 


This empire of La Faustin over men, an empire 
which she seemed to attain and retain by her delicate 
flattery, was really won by the sincerity and frank- 
ness of her admiration, which every one felt was un- 
premeditated and uncalculated. It was, in fact, the 
natural and spontaneous expression of her admiration 
for all that was distinguished, superior and successful. 

In the last century an Englishman loved a French- 
woman with passionate tenderness. This tenderness 
found expression one lovely summer’s night in these 
words : 

“ Do not look at it in that way, dearest, for I cannot 
give it to you Î ” 

It was a star on which the lady was gazing. 

In the love of Lord Annandale there was something 
of this tenderness, for in the quiet of this stately 
Hôtel, where he and La Faustin lived apart from 
each other, he would say to her sometimes in earnest, 
wistful tones : 

“ Is there nothing in the world you want, Juliette?” 

“ Nothing.” 

Then there would follow a long silence and again 
the same question in a different form: 

“Can I give you anything, Juliette?” 

“No, my Lord.” 


CURIOS. 


185 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

CURIOS. 

E NGLISH love is not loquacious, nor eloquent ; it 
rarely shows itself in words, and never deals in 
choice phrases nor in caressing epithets. 

Puritanism has dismissed from the language, the 
glowing verses of Romeo and Juliet, the gallant and 
tender phraseology of Catholic centuries; and the 
Protestant Anglo-Saxon is compelled to express him- 
self either in the coarse phraseology of the people or 
in mystical phraseology, à la Tennyson. The English 
have no vocabulary of love, and when he encounters 
it in a Frenchman, he is tempted to stigmatize it as 
childish and “ troubadourish,” and to feel a positive 
contempt for the whole race which can make use of it. 

An Englishman, too, feels a great disdain for unnec- 
essary words, and is reluctant, therefore, to mar the 
beauty of his love with verbiage. 

In all his associations with French women he is 
much more reserved than a Frenchman would venture 
to be, and communicates very little of his emotions 
and thoughts, very little, in fact, of his interior self. 

But the Englishman makes up for this lack of 
conversation and expansion by his air of deference, 
admiration and submission. 


186 


CURIOS. 


La Faustin vowed everlasting gratitude to Lord 
Annandale for never addressing her with familiarity 
in the presence of others. His manner, when they 
were not alone, was reserved and almost cold. 

At the same time an Englishman, in spite of the 
most passionate attachment, has for such a woman 
a feeling of contempt which it is difficult for him 
at times to disguise. It is only with such as La 
Faustin — who occupy exceptional positions like hers, 
that this contempt is laid aside. 

Great danseuses, great singers, great actresses, are 
looked upon in Great Britain as beings of a superior 
order, and are accepted in society as ladies, and re- 
ceived at the various country houses with much pomp 
and ceremony. It therefore comes to pass that an 
intimacy with a woman of this kind becomes some- 
what intellectual in its character. 

One night when La Faustin was playing she was 
in her dressing-room, waiting to be called for the fifth 
act of Phèdre. 

At that time the dressing-rooms of the Theâtre- 
Française were simple in the extreme. A divan on 
which the actress might lie at full length to rest after 
a fatiguing rôle, three or four wretched arm-chairs, 
some photographs of the actress in her best charac- 
ters fastened upon the wall, sometimes a plaster bust 
crowned by a wreath of artificial flowers brought 
back from triumphant provincial tours — this is all 
the furniture and decoration of the wretched looking 
place. 


CURIOS. 


187 


The time had not come when the dressing-room was 
transformed into a boudoir or cabinet of curiosities, 
like that of Mademoiselle Croizette with its sumptu- 
ous hangings, like that of Mademoiselle Lloyd with 
its gay plaques and Chinese plates on the wall, like 
that of Mademoiselle Samary with its ingenious deco- 
ration on the ceiling of Japanese fans, like that of 
Mademoiselle This and Mademoiselle That, with their 
rococo and terra cotta treasures, and their sketches 
made by impressionable artists. 

La Faustin began this revolution in the dressing 
rooms of the Theatre Française assisted by little Luzy, 
whose energy and ingenuity in the pursuit of curi- 
osities and antiquities were untiring. He gave her a 
large portion of the objets d' Art in the room and assisted 
her to find the others; he had discovered in Italy some 
wonderful stained glass which was now placed in the 
ceiling of this loge. The hangings he had picked up 
in la Rue de Lappe , they were of old toile de Jouy with 
designs in applique set in Point d' Epine — almost unique 
in design and execution. People wondered what this 
strange stuff was, that draped the walls, soft blues on a 
café au lait ground. Nothing could have been more 
singular than the representations of marble steps lead- 
ing down to the gardens, terraces and colonnades, 
wreathed with climbing roses, covered with white and 
rosy blossoms, with deep yellow and red flowers. 

Then little Luzy induced La Faustin to buy from 
Vidalenc an enormous piece of furniture which filled 
up one end of the small salon attached to her dressing 


188 


CURIOS. 


room, this piece of furniture had three mirrors, two 
projecting from the centre panel which permitted the 
actress to see herself on all sides ; it was of mahogany 
and brass, and was manufactured by Jacob for the 
Empress Josephine. 

The evening of which we write the room was full, 
and Lord Annandale, who on the nights that Juliette 
played was always in this salon, or among the audience, 
was standing near the chimney with one elbow on the 
marble. 

The room was so crowded that with each new guest 
one who was already there was obliged to leave, and 
the tabouret drawn close to Juliette’s chair was occu- 
pied with a succession of persons who were not allowed 
to remain more than a very few minutes. 

A lecturer begged that she would be present at his 
next lecture, and on securing her promise gave place 
to the editor of one of the daily papers, who came to 
ask her to take a stall at a Fair to be given in aid of 
some charity, and the editor was followed by little 
Luzy, whom Lord Annandale detested as absolutely as 
if he had been J uliette’s lover. 

In this room La Faustin was not in the least the 
same woman as the one of the Faubourg Saint Honoré, 
for there her eyes and her smiles were for her lover 
alone, but in this corner of the theatre the actress was 
uppermost and all the former coquetry of La Faustin 
returned. 

Her movements and the glances of her eyes were 
coquettish, her friendliness degenerated almost into 


CURIOS. 


189 


caresses. Here La Faustin laid aside her reserve and 
all her calmness for a certain feverish excitement of 
manner, which kept her lover in agonized suspense. 
She was here the woman of the world and the actress. 

A stout man came puffing into the room. He wore 
yellow gloves, which made his huge hands very con- 
spicuous. His watch chain was elaborately arranged 
over a white vest, a colored necktie with long ends 
was well spread out. 

This stranger thrust every one aside and made his 
way up to the actress, and in a loud voice exclaimed : 

“ Well, my dear, you know me, don’t you ? ” 

And his old companion, for he was a strolling actor 
with whom Juliette had often played, began a long 
conversation with her, addressing her as “ my dear ” 
all the time. 

Lord Annandale, who was holding in his long, ner- 
vous fingers a dainty cup in a bamboo framework, 
suddenly crushed it in his fingers. 

“Bless me!” cried La Faustin, “he has broken my 
little cup — the cup that came from Mademoiselle 
Clairon’s sale. I was so fond of it ! ” 

And the actress went up to the mantel-shelf and 
inspected the débris with the silent desolation of a 
child whose favorite plaything had been destroyed. 

“I will give you another, my dear, one much more 
beautiful ! ” said Lord Annandale. 

“Now, hear that! These rich people think that 
anything may be replaced with money. You must 
give me one of gold ! ” 


190 


C U RIOS. 


And the actress as she spoke gathered up the 
precious fragments in her tunic. 

41 1 want every bit of this one, though, and I forbid 
you to touch another thing on this shelf!” said 
Juliette, in a half jesting, half angry tone. 

The strolling player lingered during this little scene, 
and even took the liberty of recommending a man 
who riveted china with wonderful skill. At this Lord 
Annandale lost all patience, and looked at him from 
head to foot with an expression of such intense con- 
tempt that the worthy man was fairly withered by it, 
and silently took his hat and his departure without 
even taking leave of Juliette. 

44 Yes, my Lord, 3^011 are certainly very awkward, 
and very far from amiable,” said La Faustin, who had 
been greatly disturbed by the appearance of her old 
companion, and now sought relief and diversion in one 
of those scenes half angry and half tender, of which 
women so well understand the secret. 

“The truth is, Juliette, that in this place your ways, 
the expression of your face, are totally changed. Your 
voice, too ” — 

44 Well ! What is the matter with my face and my 
voice?” 

“And when I hear a man like that call you 4 my 
dear,’ I want to kill him ! ” continued Lord Annandale, 
without answering Juliette. He spoke in a soft, gentle 
voice, but his face was suddenly flushed. 

44 Then, my friend, it was a most unfortunate idea 
of yours to love an actress.” 

At this moment Ragache thrust his head through 


CURIOS. 


191 


the half-open door, and imitating Monsieur Prud- 
homme, said : 

“Belle dame, may one venture to intrude here?” 

Lord Annandale closed the door quickly in his face, 
with the rude words: 

“Not at present. I am talking on business with 
Madame.” 

Having spoken by an uncontrollable impulse, this 
English Lord, this man who prided himself on being a 
gentleman, was thoroughly disgusted with himself, 
and uttered an exclamatory oh ! as he would have done 
had any one other than himself been guilty of this 
rudeness — and turning to Juliette, he said: 

“ Shall I call him back, Madame ? Shall I apologize 
to him?” 

The actress shrugged her shoulders with an air of 
absolute indifference, and then, going up to her lover, 
she laid her hand on his arm and said, in a half 
whisper : 

“ My friend, I think you are a little crazy.” 

“I am only jealous.” 

“Jealous of whom?” 

“ Of every one.” 

“ Of the public, perhaps ? ” 

“You are right,” answered Lord Annandale, very 
seriously. 

“ Then why do you not ask me to leave the stage ? ” 

“I ask no sacrifice from you, Juliette, if I suffer, 
that is my own affair.” 

Then they were interrupted by a summons for La 
Faustin. 


192 JEALOUSY AND NERVES 


CHAPTER XXX. 

JEALOUSY AND NERVES. 

A FAUSTIN lay on a couch wrapped in her dress- 



JL À ing gown. She was evidently out of temper and 
out of spirits, suffering from an attack of the nerves. 

Apparent^ preoccupied, she paid no attention to 
Lord Annandale’s affectionate questions, who finally 
turned away and unfolded one of those huge English 
newspapers, in which there is reading enough to 
occupy one for a week. 

“But can’t you understand — can't you realize,” sud- 
denly exclaimed the actress, giving the newspaper an 
impatient push, which threw it on the floor. “Can’t 
you see that the theatre is everything to me? I mean 
that I can’t imagine how I could get through the day 
if I did not know that I was to play at night? People 
like yourself cannot of course understand the passion 
of an actress for her métier , and you, of course, con- 
sider it a very simple thing for me to abandon my 
career.” 

“But I have never asked you to do this, Juliette.” 

“Not in so many words I know. Had you done so I 
should in spite of all the love I feel for you been obliged 
to say, “ no it is impossible. A great actress like myself 
cannot deliberately give up her life like that. No, you 
have never asked me, but — ” 


JEALOUSY AND NERVES. 


193 


“My child, I perfectly well understand that my 
devotion and love could not fill up the void in your 
existence were you to quit the stage, so well do I know 
this that I should do all in my power, were you in- 
clined to leave it, to keep you there.” 

“Yes, men are strange creatures. You say you 
would do your best to keep me on the stage, but 
if each time I play, you look as if you were at a 
funeral — ” 

“ Pray do not let us discuss the occurrences of the 
other evening again.” 

“But if I may not be allowed to speak to any one 
in my little salon at the theatre without you being 
tortured by jealousy — 

“ Come now my child — ” 

“ And if when any one calls me “ my dear,” you 
break my china.” 

“ J uliette — ” 

“ If when the public call me before the curtain you 
frown and look as if you were in an agony ! You 
know you have told me over and over again that you 
did not like it.” 

“I was wrong, wrong and foolish, but I promise you 
that it shall not occur again.” 

“ And you think that I like spending my life in the 
society of a man who is suffering — suffering pangs that 
are caused by me, and who looks at me all the time 
w'ith an expression that seems to say that I am totally 
without heart. Let me assure you my friend that this 
is not in the least agreeable.” 

12 


194 


JEALOUSY AND NERVES. 


And with the insincerity and bad faith in which 
women indulge when under the influence of an attack 
of the nerves, La Faustin so twisted the words of 
her lover that they expressed precisely the contrary 
meaning of what they were intended ; thus with little 
frowns and shrugs of the shoulders, and acrimonious 
words disturbing his serenity. 

The actress was certainly in a most aggressive 
frame of mind. 


JACK. 


195 


CHAPTER XXXI. 


JACK. 



F whom are you speaking?” said La Faustin to 


\_J a compatriot of Lord Annandale’s, who had 
just dropped the hind foot of a horse he was ex- 
amining with great attention, at the same time con- 
versing with Lord Annandale. 

It was the hour of the daily visit to the stables — 
which were in the most immaculate order. The toi- 
lette of the horses had been made with the infinite 
care that characterizes an English stable. Three mats 
were laid in each stall ; the upper one was of the 
natural color of the straw, the next was green, the 
color of the livery of the house, and the lower one 
was red, coming beyond the other two. 

The whole stable was covered with fine sand, in the 
centre of which was depicted in sand of a different 
tint, the family arms, or rather the crest. 

“Of whom was I speaking?” said the Englishman, 
turning to La Faustin ; and he named the actress who 
was called the most witty woman in Paris. 

La Faustin turned hastily away, leaving the two 
friends in the stables, and going to the stable-yard, 
where there were innumerable dogs, she called Jack, 
the little creature that had belonged to Blancheron, 


196 


JACK. 


who ran to meet her with joyous barks. She took him 
in her arms and carried him to the salon through the 
glass covered piazzas. 

And there, as she caressed the dog with one hand, 
she opened the tragedy of Andromache with the other. 
She was studying the part of Hermione. 

Lord Annandale came into the salon ; the actress 
did not lift her eyes from the book. 

“You thought my friend very peculiar?” said 
Annandale. 

La Faustin did not reply at first. After a few 
moments she closed her book, and, as if she had not 
heard the question, she said : 

“ Your compatriots like actresses, I see?” 

“ Yes, I think they, as a rule, prefer them.” 

“ Do you suppose they love the woman ? ” 

“ I beg your pardon ! ” 

“Do you suppose they love the woman for herself?” 

“ Why, of course ” 

“ Not so,” cried the actress, dropping the dog on 
the ground, and beginning to pace the salon with 
angry vehemence, “ I tell you it is not the woman they 
love, it is her talent;” and La Faustin shrugged her 
shoulders, “her talent and her notoriety.” They enjoy 
the applause of the crowd, the encomiums of the jour- 
nals, the flattery of the salons — her name on the lips of 
every one, but the woman herself is nothing.” 

“ But I love the woman,” answered Lord Annandale. 

“Are you sure of that?” cried the actress, going 
up to him and looking full in his eyes. 


JACK. 197 

Then after a long silence she said in a slow, cold 
voice : — 

“You are like the others. Were I to leave the stage 
at the end of six months, you would love me no more.” 

“But you do not intend to leave the stage, Juliette 
— and why?” 

“ That is true ; you are right ; ” and she breathed a 
long sigh of relief. 

“ Let us go out,” she suddenly exclaimed, “ let us do 
something. I am at liberty to-day. Take me to dine 
at a cabaret; your great Hotel oppresses me this 
morning. I want to break through my gilded bars for 
once, as the girl said in the play. Then to-night we 
will go to the theatre — not one of the fashionable 
theatres, but somewhere where I can laugh ! ” 


198 


CAPR IC E . 


CHAPTER XXXII. 


CAPRICE. 



IOR a fortnight La Faustin was in a most contradic- 


X 1 tory mood, from morning until night, apropos of 
anything and everything. If he called the day fine she 
called it vile, if he wanted one carriage she wanted 
another. The dishes he liked at breakfast or dinner 
she found unendurable. In short there was not an 
opinion advanced by Lord Annandale that she did not 
take the contrary side. 

These discussions invariably began thus, an impatient 
movement of the foot, then a shake of her shoulders, a 
gray shadow stealing over her face, lips compressed 
with a determination not to speak. In spite of this 
manifest resolution, in a second or two Juliette would 
utter some sharp, acrimonious word, said in a tragic 
tone, then the lips would close and the foot recom- 
mence its impatient movement. 

She awaited a reply, but none came. 

Then — to arouse her lover — to make him angry, to 
bring on the scene of which her irritated nerves had 
need, she began a series of provoking insults, which 
were quite enough to weary human patience. 

Lord Annandale treated her as if she had been a 
child, and instead of reasoning with her, yielded in all 


CAPRICE. 


199 

particulars. Finally, Juliette rushed out of the room 
conquered by the crushed spirits of her victim, and 
slammed all the doors violently after her. 

She returned after a little, and was as sweet as if 
nothing had taken place. 

In the Course of another hour, she had worked her- 
self up to another scene. Amid all these freaks of 
temper, of all this capriciousness, of all these exterior 
indications of a struggle going on within her soul, 
there were hours when it was very apparent that she 
had arrived at some decision. Then again she appeared 
to be a prey to new irresolutions. Lord Annandale 
saw her in the same mood at the Theatre. She quar- 
reled almost every evening with the Director. She 
disputed every morning with one or more of her sister 
actresses, to whom she sent presents the next day. 
She threw herself at the head of each new comer only 
to draw back with haughty pride, when he showed 
himself only too ready to meet her advances. The 
Comédie-Française, like all the rest of her world, 
asked themselves if the mind of the actress was not 
affected. 


200 


A NEW PROPOSAL. 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 

A NEW PROPOSAL. 

“TTOU are a little late, my dear,” said Lord Annan- 

A dale to Juliette, as she came in one day. 

“ A'little? No, I am very late,” she replied, as she 
threw her hat and wraps on a sofa. 

“You look very lovely, at all events,” continued 
Annandale, inspecting her more closely. “That robe 
suits you wonderfully well, and your face is brighter 
than I have seen it for a long time. The East Indians 
have an expression that describes it — a face radiant 
with a good action.’ ” 

“ Is it possible that my face is so indiscreet as that? 
But let us go to dinner, for I am literally starving. 
We will talk later of what I have been doing to-day.” 

They entered the dining-room. 

“Upon my w'ord ! ” she exclaimed, “you look at me 
with the delighted expression of a child who has just 
had a big cake given to him.” 

“Yes, for you are very charming to-day !” 

He was right. Never had the actress looked more 
beautiful. She was dressed in black, which she greatly 
affected, but there was so much black lace about her 
that the effect was airy and transparent. The corsage 
was cut open at the throat, and against her white 
bosom she had placed a bunch of deep red carnations. 


A NEW PROPOSAL. 


201 


“ Tell me where you have been to-day and what you 
have done,” suddenly exclaimed Lord Annandale. 

“ I will weary you with all that later, but now I must 
have a glass of champagne,” said La Faustin, turning 
her head slightly toward the butler. 

The impassible butler, standing like a statue in a 
dress coat before the buffet, ordered one of his subor- 
dinates with a little nod of the head to fill the glass 
of the actress. 

La Faustin between two mouthfuls would stoop her 
head forward and inhale the perfume of her carnations. 

“I delight in this spicy odor,” she murmured. 
“ There was one year before I went on the stage that 
I made artificial flowers, and then I always put a clove 
in my carnations. Have you finished?” 

The lovers left the dining-room, and returning to 
the salon seated themselves in either corner of the 
chimney, Lord Annandale questioning Juliette with 
curious e} T es, while she smiled at his curiosity which 
she delighted in prolonging. 

Suddenly she rose, went to her lover, and putting her 
arm around his neck bade him smell of her carnations. 

“What do you smell, my Lord?” she asked. 

“ The carnations.” 

“Nothing else?” 

“No, unless it be your own sweet self.” 

“ Stupid I And yet you boast of having the keen 
scent of a savage.” 

“Ah! yes. I perceive a faint suggestion of sandal 
wood.” 


202 


A NEW PROPOSAL. 


“Precisely. There is something for you under the 
carnations.” 

With lingering, tender fingers Lord Annandale drew 
out a letter that he opened, while La Faustin, now 
very serious, said : 

44 It is a copy of a letter that I sent to the Director of 
the Comddie-Française this morning, and which is 
published to-night in all the evening papers.” 

44 And you have done this for me, my Juliette!” 
cried Lord Annandale after reading the letter at a 
glance. 

44 So it would seem ! ” answered La Faustin with a 
mischievous little laugh. 

44 You have sent in your resignation as a member of 
the company ? You leave the stage, you give up all 
this brilliant life ? It is impossible ! Have you seri- 
ously reflected ? ” 

44 No, serious reflection is not what one wants at a 
time like this. It is for my heart to speak.” 

44 Yes, but—” 

44 No buts, my dear, for I have made up my mind.” 

44 Nevertheless, Juliette, I am very much afraid that 
you will not have the strength to carry out this sacrifice, 
and that you will bitterly repent one of these days.” 

44 That may be of course, I can’t be sure. At all 
events however my repentance will not come to-morrow. 
I want to feel that you are absolutely happy for once.” 

And she sighed as she spoke. There was a tear in 
her eyes and a smile on her lips. “ And the recollection 
of your happiness,” she continued 44 will recompense me 
for many regrets later.” 


A NEW PROPOSAL. 


203 


There was a long silence and then Lord Annandale 
rose from his chair. Standing before La Faustin he 
said with solemn gravity. 

“ Then Juliette, you must become my wife.” 

“Your wife, William,” stammered La Faustin, half 
rising from her seat and then sinking back with eyes 
half closed, her whole face beaming with happiness, 
such happiness as is sometimes seen on the face of a 
sleeping woman who is dreaming. 

“You consent, do you not?” continued Lord 
Annandale. 

“No, my friend,” she said, after a long silence. 

“And why not?” 

“ Because — because it is impossible ! ” 

“But if it would add to my happiness, Madame?” 

La Faustin did not reply, but her hands twitched 
convulsively, as the hands of those who are suffering 
intense pain sometimes twitch. 

“ I ask it on my knees,” said her lover, covering her 
hands with kisses. 

“ Oh ! Leave me now, I implore you ! Do not com- 
pel me to speak. There are things that I cannot, will 
not utter. If I had never met Blancheron ! ” 

“You must forget all that, as I do,” answered her 
lover, passionately. 

“ But it is impossible for me to forget ! ” said La 
Faustin. “ You have no idea what the lives of we 
girls of the people are, when we first enter the theatre. 
Yon have no idea of our destitution and of our neces- 
sities, and of our dependence on the Directors and on 


204 


A NEW PROPOSAL. 


others. In fact, if there were not some one to protect 
us, to defend us and pension us, our lives would be 
far worse than they are now. Do not make me talk 
of this. Look up at that portrait!” and she pointed 
to a haughty face hung upon the wall, the portrait of 
his father. “Ask him what he thinks of this proposi- 
tion made by his son. Your wife, did you say?” 

“Ah! my friend,” she continued, in a tone that was 
absolutely piteous, “we are not born to make lawful 
wives — but I am yours forever, if you want me.” 

And La Faustin, throwing herself into the arms of 
her lover, continued in a voice that she sought to 
render natural : 

“ Be good, dear. Say no more about this ; let us 
talk a little business now. We have a lawsuit in 
prospect, for the Director is furious ; not only this, 
but I shall be besieged with officious intermeddlers 
who will come with the hope of inducing me to change 
my mind. We must leave Paris and spend some 
months out of France. You had best go to the 
English Embassy to-night, and I will pay a little visit 
to my sister whom you have made me neglect for some 
time most shamefully.” 

And she turned to leave the room, Lord Annandale 
sitting half stunned in an armchair. He looked so 
sad as she passed him, so utterly depressed, that she 
came back to give him one parting embrace. 

“Where do you want to go?” he asked. 

“ Wherever you please,” was her reply. 


MARIA FAUSTIN. 


205 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

MARIA FAUSTIN. 

M ARIA, in a dressing gown of blue cashmere with 
trimmings and pockets of white, was very busy 
giving her goldfish a little vermicelli. 

When the actress appeared, Bonne-Ame turned away 
from the luminous globe and the gluttonish fish, and 
addressing her sister said, sarcastically: 

“And you are going to be fool enough at your age 
to leave the stage for this Englishman. I dare say 
the man is fascinating, and that he speaks several 
languages, but really” — 

“You know, Maria,” answered La Faustin, “that 
every one has a right to do with his life as seems best 
unto himself.” 

“And Carsonac?” 

“ He has gone away — to Brussels I 
“But you are in your dressing gown. Were you 
going to bed?” 

“No — I am waiting for some one.” 

“ For Gargouillard, of course ? ” 

“ Gargouillard, indeed ! He has been forgotten for 
weeks. He has been sent to a warmer climate, to 
Italy. The climate of Paris is too damp for him. 
Did you know his face was slapped at the Theatre ? ” 


206 


MARIA FAUSTIN. 


As she spoke Bonne-Ame went up to the chimney, 
where blazed a bright and delightful little fire, and 
seated herself à V officier on a chair; in this way dis- 
closing her leg, which was neatly dressed in a silk 
stocking held up by a scarlet garter, in the bow of 
which glittered a Marquisite buckle. She leaned 
forward and took from her dressing-table a large 
bottle, and threw on the coals a portion of the 
liquid it contained. Immediately the room was thick 
with the smoke of benzoin, thick enough to choke 
a regiment. 

Inhaling this stifling smoke with a sort of angry 
delight, she said : 

“I like vulgar perfumes,” and then added more 
sharply : 

“No, it is not Gargouillard. I have done with him. 
In fact I think I prefer to be adored by my inferiors. 
You can insist upon their amiability, as you would on 
their splitting the wood for your fire. There is no 
necessity for any pretence with them.” 

And rising from her chair, she thrust her angry 
white hands through her hair that had been so care- 
fully arranged, and began to pace the room like a wild 
animal in a cage: her blue eyes were black as night, 
and flashed with rage. She looked thoroughly wicked. 
Suddenly she stopped short, and exclaimed: 

“Would to Heaven I were in your skin! Oh! 
men, men ! ” 

She said no more, but there came into her face an 
expression of implacable hatred and the fierce joy born 


MARIA FAUSTIN. 207 

of a hope of revenging all the wrongs women had 
suffered at the hands of mankind. 

Then turning back to the fire she poured more ben- 
zoin on the coals, and then scattered it energetically 
about the room. 

“ There, now go,” she said to her sister, “ I don’t 
want you here any longer. You make me simply 
furious. Go ! ” 


208 


AN AUCTION. 


CHAPTER XXXV. 


AN AUCTION. 


“ OU are going with me, my friend,” said La Faus* 



X tin, the day after this visit, to her sister, as she 
took her hat and gloves from the hands of her maid. 

“ I am entirely at your service.” 

La Faustin took from a table a thin book in a green 
paper cover, and they entered their carriage. 

The landau rolled away into a retired Quartier of 
Paris, and stopped before a house that had several 
placards on the wall, two policemen at the door and a 
crowd upon the sidewalk — of old women and young 
shop girls without hats or caps, all watching every one 
who entered the house with rapt attention. 

It was an exhibition of the furniture and wardrobe 
of a great actress, a tragedienne, like La Faustin, an 
actress who had been in her life even more renowned 
and admired than the woman who now came to exam- 
ine her effects. 

Lord Annandale and La Faustin slowly mounted 
the wide low steps of the staircase and found them- 
selves in a large room lighted only by the gray light of 
a court-yard coming through dirty windows. Every 
thing looked dull and sordid. 

Here against the wall hung in limp folds all the 


AN AUCTION. 


209 


garments of the defunct. Garments of the woman, 
and garments of the Queen of the Theatre. Evening 
wraps of white satin, quilted ; robes worn by Phèdre, 
by Hermione and Roxana; all the dramatic relics of 
this woman now cold in death, were suspended here 
as if it had been in the Morgue, or looking rather 
like ghostly phantoms made immovable by the first 
ray of daylight. 

Over this rumpled finery, heads of old clothes-deal- 
ers were bent as if to assure themselves that the sword 
of the brother of Camille, had not made a rent in the 
tunic of his sister. 

And through all this came the monotonous words, 
said over and over again : 

“Move on, ladies and gentlemen, move on !” 

These words were uttered by a crier who pushed on 
this gaping, irreverent crowd. In another room were 
exhibited the diamonds, a reliquary of jewels designed 
on the Etruscan models of the Vatican and the Musée 
Borbonico, a Zingara parure of ancient style, made 
of unknown stones, mounted by some Gilles l’Egaré 
of the Kingdom of Thun. 

And among this mass of incongruous things, of 
travelling utensils all in gold, were books in econom- 
ical half bindings, and a portion of a table service of 
modern Sevres. There was silver plate and handsome 
wine-coolers — mute witnesses of past gay suppers — 
which silversmiths were weighing contemplatively on 
their hands, making an approximate estimate of their 
value. 


13 


210 


AN A U C T I O N . 


And still came the perpetual mandate, “Move on, 
ladies and gentlemen, move on ! ” 

Finally La Faustin entered the sleeping-room, and 
there on the ebony bedstead, with its lace curtains 
lined with blue, and on the tables and chiffonieres 
were displayed quantities of lace, Valenciennes, Brus- 
sels, Pointe d’Aiguille, Pointe de Venise and Mechlin, 
handkerchiefs fine as cobwebs, flounces and shawls ; 
all these spiders-webs were watched over by a little 
dried-up old woman — a Jewess. And in this room 
people stood, and calmly enumerated the names of the 
admirers of this woman, but they had forgotten the 
rôles of the actress. 

“ Move on, ladies and gentlemen, move on ! ” repeated 
the crier. 

“ And this is all ! ” said La Faustin, sadly, as she 
seated herself in her carriage again. 

“Why did you come here? Did you wish to buy 
anything? ” 

“ Nothing in the world I ’* 

“ Then, why on earth did you expose yourself to so 
melancholy a scene? You seem to feel it very deeply, 
too.” 

La Faustin smiled faintly. Taking Lord Annan- 
dale’s hand in both hers, she said : 

“ Men are not quick to understand, it seems to me. 
You ask why I came. It was to assist at the death of 
the actress in myself. Yes, Y wished this scene to be 
the last souvenir that I should take with me from 
Paris!” 


DEPARTURE. 


211 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 

DEPARTURE. 

I N another fortnight the two lovers were installed at 
Lindau in the villa Isemburg on Lake Constance. 
They were surrounded by blue mountains, and on the 
shores of an ocean in miniature which is called by the 
Germans the mer de Souabe. Swaying branches of 
stately forest trees, clambering vines and lovely wild 
flowers all irradiated by the glowdng sun light, made 
a picture that delighted La Faustin. 

The villa where the young English Lord and the 
actress were established had been, only a few years 
before, the home of a certain Count Isemburg and of 
Princess Frederica Wilhelmina de Hohenlohe, daughter 
of the Elector of Hesse, a charming woman, who had 
been made very unhappy by her husband, who had 
finally abandoned her. 

It was a very large house and the flower garden ran 
down to the edge of the lake, and was ornamented 
in German fashion with stars formed of plants of 
various shades, imitating the epergnes once in vogue, 
which had long arms stretching from a centre piece in 
which an octogenarian gardener continued to interlace 
the initials of the names of the Princess and the 
Count. 


212 


DEPARTURE. 


At one end of this quaint old flower garden and on 
the shore of the lake was a Gothic Chapel, and at the 
other, were steps and a small wharf for a Venetian 
gondola. These steps were guarded by two bronze 
pages bearing lanterns in their uplifted hands. 

Behind the villa was a grove, with winding paths 
like those in an English park; clumps of trees grew 
with their roots in the water, which kept the foliage of 
a bright tender green. Here and there openings or 
cuttings were made, which gave a view, and also per- 
mitted the erection of tables where coffee or tea could 
be taken, under a thatched roof. One of these places 
was named “ Sorrento.” 

One path overhung with purple beeches ran along 
the side of the brook all green with water cresses, 
and led to an aviary once full of rare birds, but now 
converted into a poultry yard. This path had an odd 
effect from the fact that an Isemburg had paved it with 
the fragments of broken plates, broken by two gen- 
erations which had used only pewter, and porcelain 
from China. Consequently La Faustin walked on a 
gold, vermilion, and blue soil, by the side of the green 
brook and with the strange shadows of wine colored 
leaves over her head. 


LIFE OUT OF DOORS. 


213 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 

LIFE OUT OF DOORS. 

T O theatrical people, life in the open air is an especial 
happiness, and an immense exhilaration. 

These men and women who live all day long in the 
dim light of rehearsals, whose sunshine is gas light, 
whose turf is only a green carpet, who breathe lamp 
smoke and lamp oil, whose existence in short is 
passed among clouds painted on canvas, where thunder 
is made by much beating on tin pans, and snow by in- 
finitesimal bits of paper, these men and women are 
intpxicated by Nature, and behave like children who 
are made tipsy by a thimble full of wine. 

Ah ! how good it all was ! How they basked in the 
sun that seemed to them so delightful! 

Have my readers ever watched these theatre people 
when they are out in the fields and the woods, under 
the blue sky ? When they throw back their shoulders 
and drink in the fresh air which is like the breath of 
friends on a fevered brow wet with cologne. Have 
they ever seen these people walking slowly along with 
hesitating steps, stopping every few minutes to investi- 
gate with an umbrella or cane the habits of some 
peculiar looking insect? 

At noon they rest on the moss in a repose that is 


214 


LIFE OUT OF DOORS. 


not sleep, and listen breathlessly to the soft hum of 
the bees, or look with half-veiled eyes on the distant 
horizon, and on the infinite beauty of the woods and 
the meadows. 

Have my readers ever noticed them, too, when the 
shadows begin to lengthen and twilight comes on ? 

These sunny days, the fragrance of all these grow- 
ing things, of all these cordials poured out by the sky 
and the earth, on these creatures of an artificial life, 
creates in them a joy that is healthy and delightful to 
witness. 

It rained the day after La Faustin reached Isem- 
burg. The actress stood at the window and watched 
the rain and the clouds impatiently. Finally she 
could bear it no longer. She took her umbrella and 
went out on the piazza. Never did the rain come 
down harder ; it came in those great drops whiclj so 
speedily drench one to the skin. 

She hesitated for a moment, as she stood at the head 
of the steps, then sheltering herself as best she could 
with her umbrella, she made a rush to a tree under 
which she stood watching the shower for some time. 
But very soon this gay, laughing rain seemed to coax 
her on, and having the friendly shelter of the tree she 
started forth. 

Wet to the very bone, she yet enjoyed this new 
experience. Alone, as she was, she laughed aloud 
with childish gayety as she felt the water trickle from 
her umbrella down her back between her shoulder 
blades. 


II AP P I NK SS. 


215 


CHAPTER XXXVIII. 


HAPPINESS. 


Lindau. Villa Isemburg, July. 


EAR LITTLE MARIA: — Your sister has laid 



U aside Tragedy forever. It will not be said of 
me that when my last hour was nigh, I took a fiacre 
and drove to the Theâtre-Française, to look upon its 
façade. No, the actress is entirely dead in me. I 
must confess that in the beginning I did not feel at all 
sure of myself, and I said when I first came here : 

“ Oh ! I shall soon have an attack of my old longing 
for the Theatre. 

“ But it has not come yet, I assure you. Let 
me tell you, my dear sister, that while it is very 
delightful to be applauded there is such a thing as 
paying too dearly for such applause. 

“What, after all, does glory amount to? Love, 
for us women, is far better than all else. You know 
nothing of what I mean, for you have never loved. 
You have had plenty of caprices — for men each of 
whom was more worthless than the others. 

“ But to love, to love sincerely and truly, is much 
more amusing than to produce an effect. While I, 
however, have found only pleasure in my leaving the 
stage, there is one person here who has not doue the 
same, and this is my old Guenagaud. 


216 


HAPPINESS. 


“You have no idea how sorrow-stricken she looks. 
The very hang of her skirts is depressing. She is abso- 
lutely miserable in this place. I wish you could see 
her: she will hardly speak to the other servants, and 
does not behave much better with Lord Annandale 
himself. She looks upon him as having given the 
death blow to my dramatic talent, and hates him 
accordingly. She sits in a corner the greater part of the 
time, with those terrible spectacles of hers on her nose, 
and looks over old newspaper extracts which she cut 
out, and brought from Paris with her. But she makes 
amends for her long silence through the day by her 
garrulousness when she undresses me at night. She 
talks incessantly then of our past lives, of our little 
home when she first entered my service. She says : 

“ ‘ Does Madame remember how Mr. ,’ then she 

names some young collegian or clerk whom I had for- 
gotten. Or else she says : 

“‘Does Madame remember the laurel wreath pre- 
sented to her by so and so ? ’ 

“ She alluded to a wreath presented by some shabby 
unkempt looking provincial. And this is the way she 
goes on. Poor old soul ! I haven’t the heart or the 
courage to compel her to be silent, and thus spoil the 
only happy half hour she has in the day. These ‘ do 
you remember,’ and ‘have you forgotten,’ give her 
intense gratification, while they do not make me 
regret in the smallest degree the determination I 
have taken. 

“It is very delightful here. There is water, lovely 


II A P P INK 3 S . 


217 


blue water around us, and the house is almost covered 
by plants that climb to the very roofs. I can’t tell you 
their names, for I do not know them. 

“ And such vegetables there are here ! Such peas ! 
Such pears ! 

“ As to the servants, they are not like ours. They 
are all thieves, such thieves that everything is put 
under lock and key, and I believe the mistress of 
the house is expected to give to the cook the very 
pinches of salt she uses. But I have told you enough 
about the place, have I not ? 

“ As to the Lord and Master, I have little to tell you 
of him except that I love him more madly than ever. 
My Lord is not the least demonstrative, not like a 
Frenchman in that respect, but he is always on the qui 
vive to give me either some small or some great plea- 
sure. His mind is continually occupied in trying to 
make those he loves happy. 

“ He does his best, too, not only to give you positive 
pleasure but to smooth from your path the smallest 
annoyance, at any and every cost to himself. 

“ I tell him sometimes, jestingly, that he seems to 
think it his duty to sift the sand on a woman’s path in 
life until not the smallest pebble can graze the kid of 
her boot. 

“ You know the lawsuit I had with the Theâtre- 
Française and the preposterous indemnity they de- 
manded ? I agreed with my lawyer that I should not 
be harassed with the matter, but that the suit should 
be carried on in the courts without my hearing 


218 


HAPPINESS. 


anything about it. But there was a signature needed, 
and I must confess that when I saw the paper I had 
an attack of the nerves. But the next day I had for- 
gotten it entirely, and not for two or three days more 
did the recollection of the paper enter my head. 
When I did remember it and sent it back to Paris I 
received in return a letter saying that Lord Annandale 
had given orders that the indemnity should be paid in 
full. And he had never mentioned the matter to me I 

“I am well aware that this suit has been brought 
against me on his account, but I think to pay 100,000 
francs, instead of 40,000 or 30,000 perhaps, and only to 
save me the annoyance of the sight of these perpetual 
summons, was a very nice thing for him to do, and 
deserves warm affection in return. 

“ I am perfectly happy ; I eat like a wolf, and sleep 
like a dormouse. 

“ By the way, I must tell } r ou of a dream I had the 
other night, after a long ride on horseback and two 
glasses of port at dinner. It seemed to me that I saw 
my brains — I don’t know how or why- — in a wire bas- 
ket, such as salads are dried in, and that it was that 
beautifully moulded arm and hand which we constantly 
see in plaster, known as 1 The Assassin’s Hand,’ that 
was shaking the basket violently. And this arm and 
hand belonged to nothing ! Do you think this sense- 
less dream came from the port or the ride ? 

“ Pray send me some news from Paris, and be sure to 
send me some news of the Theatre. Little Luzy is 
married, is he not ? I wager any amount that it is to 


HAPPINESS. 


219 


the danseuse at the Opera, the one with the beautiful 
eyes and the big nose. 

“ Have you been to the Cemetery, and have you seen 
that the gardener has arranged the flowers around 
Blancheron’s monument as he promised to do ? I am 
afraid I did not love the poor fellow much when he 
was alive, I was at times even unkind to him, but I am 
anxious that his tomb shall look as if he were a little 
beloved in this world. 

“ Your Affectionate Sister, 

“Juliette.” 

“P. S. Where are you going this summer? To 
Homburg? In that case you and your boy must spend 
a few days with us on your way.” 

An active bustling life in the open air, either in light 
carriages, or borne by fleet horses, when not a square 
yard for seven or eight leagues around was left unex- 
plored — a life of violent exercise, much rare beef, and 
the strong wines adored by the English — made up the 
existence of the two lovers at Lindau. 

In this material existence, in this plenitude of health 
and in the society of the man she loved, La Faustin 
became singularly beautiful. She was no longer La 
Faustin of the Comédie-Française, the Parisian actress 
showing on her spirited face the wear and tear of the 
restless, nervous and anxious life of cities ; the invari- 
able shadows of care that theatrical duties brings to 
the faces of both men and women, had vanished. La 
Faustin was a totally different woman. There was no 


220 


HAPPINESS. 


more of that gray look about the mouth ; the excessive 
pallor of the throat had vanished as well as the dark 
shadows beneath the eyes, and every indication of 
approaching years had been swept away as by a miracle. 

A charming beatitude had taken the place of her 
former sarcastic expression. The graceful figure of 
the actress had lost its angles, every wrinkle of her 
dresses filled out, and she acquired a wonderfully 
girlish roundness of face and form. 

Freshness had come to her complexion, and she 
ehxaled an odor of raspberries natural to persons of 
health who live in the country. 

In this Villa Isemburg there came to the face of 
this actress of thirty years all the girlish charms of 
seventeen. A soft color in her cheeks, transparent 
whiteness of complexion, sparkling eyes and rosy- 
tipped ears. 


SOMNAMBULISM. 


221 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 

SOMNAMBULISM. 

npHE Lakes of Germany and Switzerland are the 
JL haunts of tourists and excursionists. A constant 
succession of small steamers afford the persons who 
crowd their decks, delightful glimpses of balconies and 
broad stone steps, of doors and windows wreathed with 
climbing plants, of pretty women in graceful attitudes. 

Pavilions are built on the shore with their supports 
in the water, and the women and the flowers with 
which they are crowded remind one of nothing so 
much as the pictures in a Japanese album, depicting 
life in the East. 

One day when Juliette and Lord Annandale were 
enjoying a long excursion on horseback, they stopped 
to admire such a view as I have described. 

It was a charming picture, a picture worthy of the 
brush of the clever and spirituelle Knaus. 

In one corner of a steamboat was an old calèche 
lined with red velvet, and a mountain of trunks, 
travelling bags, and all sorts of traps, bright colored 
rugs and shawls. Children in white dresses were 
clambering over these, and a long row of chairs. 
Here and there stood several young girls having in 
their hands sticks with handles of chamois horns, and 


222 


SOMNAMBULISM. 


fastened to their belts were leather straps holding a 
field-glass, an album, a fan and umbrella. Slender and 
graceful, with throats and faces swathed in blue gauze, 
they studied the scenery. 

A little apart from the others was a group of Swiss 
peasant women, their arms folded over their white 
linen waists, and with a rapt, exalted expression on 
their faces such as women wear in church. 

Suddenly from among these silent women rose a 
song — a song as sad as mountain shadows — and with- 
out heeding the people about them, and as if for their 
own pleasure, these women filled the air with their 
shrill voices. These songs produced on Juliette a clear, 
most extraordinary effect. Not content with emptying 
her purse and that of her companion, she presented to 
the youngest of these Swiss women several ornaments 
of small value that she was wearing. 

As Lord Annandale evinced his astonishment, not 
at the generosity, but at the feverish manner in which 
she made her gifts, La Faustin said, gravely: 

“ It is because I once sang as these women are 
doing.” 

The effect of this scene by no means wore away at 
once. It seemed to have transported the actress to 
another world, a world peopled with memories. 

She said no more, but applied her whip to her horse 
and rode on at full speed. 

When she returned to the villa she was too weary 
to sit down to table — she took some bouillon and 
retired. 


SOM N A M B U L I S M . 


223 


During the night William was startled by the sound 
of some one speaking. He ran to the door that led 
into Juliette’s room, and was startled to see her 
standing in the centre of the chamber with the moon 
streaming full upon her through the open window, 
declaiming Hermione’s words : 

“ Ou suis-je ? Qu’ ai-je fait ? Que dois-je faire encore ? 

Quel transport nie saisit ? Quel chagrin me dévore ? 

Errante et sans dessin, je cours dans ce palais ? ” 

La Faustin, when studying a part, was subject to 
attacks of somnambulism, in which she would start up 
from her pillows and repeat whole verses aloud, but 
she had never been known before to leave her bed and 
move about as if on the stage of a theatre. 

She was superb in this spectral light, as she recited 
these sonorous lines in a rich undertone in the minor 
key, which she usually employed when she first tried 
her new rôles, a voice that gave to the lines a tragic 
force and absolute terror. It was as if a ghost were 
reciting a scene from some tragedy. 

La Faustin played in this way the entire first scene, 
and waited in the second a long time, evidently expect- 
ing the reply of Clione; not hearing it she became 
impatient and awoke. It was some time before she 
knew where she was or what she had done or said. 

Then she threw herself into William’s arms saying: 
“It was not my fault! It was not my fault! I hare 
done my very best not to be an actress ! ” 


224 


LINDAÜ. 


CHAPTER XL. 

LIND AU. 

A FTER this excursion, La Faustinas thoughts wan- 
dered from the Villa, and she ceased to live 
entirely in the present. 

Something of the Past revived. She thought of 
past triumphs with a happy flush. She surprised her- 
self by reciting involuntarily a verse once greatly 
admired b} r the Public, and she borrowed from 
Guenagaud her collection of newspaper slips and read 
them with eager joy. 

On all these thoughts of the theatre, she felt it to be 
wrong to linger. She drove them away, but they 
returned to her more and more often in the watchful 
hours of the night. 

As she lay on her pillow, a succession of images 
passed before her closed eyelids like figures etched 
upon a mirror. She saw all those dark corners of the 
coulisses , and caught the gleam of a satin peplum or of 
a chlamydes. In the morning she waked with her head 
full of ideas for her rôle, a new rôle of which she had 
dreamed in the night, and as she opened her eyes, 
realized that her stage days were over forever. 

All day long La Faustin now found herself uncon- 
sciously seeking theatrical effects, and her little feet, 


LINDAU. 


225 


hurrying over the gravel walks in the Park, would 
suddenly stop, and adopt the dramatic measured tread 
of an entrée in a certain Fifth Act, dear to the hearts 
of the habitués of the Odéon ; and in her ears rang the 
sonorous names of Greek tragedy. 

All this did not weaken her love for Lord Annan- 
dale nor mar the perfect happiness which was hers at 
Lindau, but she was conscious that her brain was 
haunted by things of which she had not thought for 
two months, and of which she had determined never 
to think again. 

Vexed with herself, and recognizing the impossi- 
bility of dismissing these remembrances and thoughts, 
as she had hoped to do, she would suddenly cry out, 
as if addressing some other creature than herself: 

“No, no, I tell you all is done with — entirely done 
with ! ” 

La Faustin never opened a French newspaper with- 
out glancing first at the column headed “ Theatres,” 
and she had thrown into the Lake a volume that had 
been sent her from Paris, the book of an illustrious 
critic recently dead, in which he had published enthu- 
siastic encomiums of her playing, her talent and her 
dramatic beauty. 

14 


226 


S O L r T U D K . 


CHAPTER XL! 


SOLITUDE 


HESE two persons were alone, with no other 



JL amusements than those afforded by their car- 
riages and horses. William’s love was somewhat 
jealous and he continued to be afraid of society, and 
consequently they lived in this great villa and in this 
princely style, having with them only one of Lord 
Annandale’s poor relations. This lady was an old 
maid — half out of her head, not insane, but in a state 
of gentle imbecility. She certainly was as ugly a 
woman as could possibly be imagined. She had all 
sorts of preposterous pruderies. Her hands wero 
enormous, and she had wrists like those of a gorilla. 

The few French phrases on which she ventured were 
preceded by an odd catching of the breath which 
seemed as if it would never finish — and ended finally 
in a choking gasp. 

This remarkable person appeared only at meals and 
for tea in the evening, after which she disappeared and 
locked herself into a room as far as possible from 
those occupied by the other inhabitants of the château. 

With the obstinacy of a true English woman, 
she practised on the piano seven hours each day. She 
had not the smallest musical talent, aptitude nor ear, 


SOLITUDE. 


227 


none the less she toiled on, her muscles and fingers being 
like steel. The noise she made did not seem to come 
from the hands of a human being, it was as if ground 
out by machinery, and would have driven most people 
perfectly wild. And all the time this Saint Cécelia 
played, her eyes were upraised to Heaven with as 
ecstatic an expression as if the skies were unrolling 
and opening before her. 

Under this constant discipline the piano was so often 
out of tune that she had attached to her service par- 
tial^ as secretary and valet de chambre, an old tuner 
of musical instruments. He had work every day. 

Dressing like a scare-crow in a field of grain, the old 
lady had but one coquetry. She adored night-caps 
and had a most coquettish collection of them — belaced 
and beribboned. It was with a loud laugh and her 
usual gasp that she said she was so frightfully ugly in 
bed that she feared if the house should take fire that 
the men who entered her room would make no attempt 
to save her, for they would surely believe that it was 
the Devil they saw. 


228 


A SPORTSMAN. 


CHAPTER XLII 


A SPORTSMAN 


HE only man who was received at the Villa — and 



1 he stayed there occasionally for a week at a 
time — was a Secretary of the English Legation in 
Bavaria. 

This man was the type of a fishing diplomate. 

He would have refused the most delightful post in 
the world if it took him into a land where no trout 
were to be found. He never took the smallest in- 
terest in the affairs of the country to which he was 
accredited, he cared nothing for their military, political, 
religious and commercial questions. He never read a 
book nor a journal. He knew nothing that was going 
on about him unless he happened to hear the conversa- 
tion of some of the members of the Legation, and was 
in fact much more moved by the loss of an especial fly 
which had been borne off in triumph by a stout fish, 
than he would have been by a declaration of war from 
Germany to his own country. He had no ideas apart 
from fish. 

In the evening after a long day on the lake, he sat 
silently bending over a little table in the corner of the 
room busily manufacturing salmon flies, or the yellow 
winged creatures known as May flies. He twisted silk 
and cut out tiny fish from tin. 


A SPORTSMAN. 


229 


One day it came to pass that the English diplomate 
undertook to imitate a rat — a rat which should entirely 
deceive the eyes of the shrewdest fish, and it was won- 
derful and strange to see the long brown lashes of this 
man, moving up and down, quivering under the fixity 
of the attention with which his eyes were riveted on 
his self-appointed task. The knowledge of Natural 
History which he brought to bear upon his work, the 
art with which he accomplished it, the lightness of 
touch with which he laid on the skin and inserted the 
two small beads that served as eyes, were wonderful. 

By slow degrees the rat reached a point at which 
any one would have sworn that it was living, and the 
greatest compliment he ever received was the start 
and frightened shriek uttered by La Faustin when he 
threw it on her knees. 

When the clock struck eleven the Englishman, 
remembering that he wished to rise early the next 
morning, carefully gathered together all his precious 
and delicate materials, and his tiny tools, he placed 
them all in his great fishing-box, which he did not close 
until he had cast a loving glance at each compartment. 

When he was first married he entertained his wife 
in the evenings by showing her, one by one, all these 
wonderful things. 

Many a solemn conference had been held over this 
box, when the husband solemnly took out each article 
and after rubbing them with a bit of chamois skin 
explained their use to his very young wife, and then 
packed them up again, delivering all the time a long 
lecture. 


230 


A STRANGER. 


CHAPTER XLIII. 


A STRANGER 


LITTLE later than this the villa had another 



guest, whom Lord Annandale announced to 
Juliette as a very eccentric countryman of his own, 
at the same time begging her to overlook his friend’s 
peculiarities for his sake. 

This guest was first seen quietly established in the 
house when Juliette came in one day from walking. 
He was refreshing himself while awaiting dinner, with 
brandy, which he drank from a large goblet held in a 
trembling hand. 

The new arrival began to talk fluently and with 
enthusiasm of Scandinavia, and the old poems of the 
North, traces of which he had discovered in the mem- 
ory of the inhabitants of the Islands he had just 
visited, and although he expressed himself in ex- 
tremely incorrect French, he greatly astonished his 
hostess, who at first had taken him for a drunkard 
who had once been a gentleman. 

They dined, and he drank brandy instead of wine, 
and ate nothing but some ox-tail soup hot enough with 
cayenne to raise blisters on the tongue, and a salad of 
cucumbers, but all the time the Hon. George Selwyn 
talked fluently and eloquently of the political situa- 


A STRANGER. 


231 


tion of Germany, of the salons of Vienna, of Racine 
and Corneille, giving his estimate of various states- 
men, telling amusing anecdotes and uttering profound 
opinions, drawing on his wonderful memory for quo- 
tations, and showing a remarkable acquaintance with 
all the literature of Europe — all this without a symp- 
tom of intoxication, and in the French language, 
becoming, in fact, more caustic and discriminating as 
the hours wore on. 

The Honorable George Selwyn greatly puzzled La 
Faustin, she could not in the least understand him. 
She felt that the man was young, and yet he was 
wrinkled and looked old. His skin was as if smoke 
dried and had the strange look that only a wicked 
criminal life can give. 

He was pretentiously dressed, but his garments were 
spotted, and he wore in his button hole a rare hot 
house flower that was unend urably fragrant, the stem 
of which was in water held in a tiny flat bottle 
concealed under the recesses of his coat. 

His hands were strangely withered, and the nail 
on the little finger was of extraordinary length and 
sheathed in gold in Chinese fashion. He wore no 
cravat and his collars were very open in the throat. 
In addition to these eccentricities, none of them agree- 
able, were a thousand other trifles which were very 
displeasing, and which in spite of his intelligence could 
never be forgotten. 

His forehead indicated Hydrocephalus, his face was 
more that of a woman than a man ; it was the face 


232 


A STRANGER. 


of an old woman and it twitched constantly, as if he 
was suffering with the St. Vitus’ dance. 

Among his intensely black hair was one white lock, 
a lock he said, which distinguished his family, and this 
he always took care to make as conspicuous as pos- 
sible. 

On adjourning to the salon George Selwyn contin- 
ued to talk of all things as if thoroughly at home in 
them, and among other things he spoke of the amber 
pastilles of the Marshal de Richelieu of which he had 
obtained the receipt from young Gassicourt — a receipt 
which in a voyage to the East had enabled him to see 
a host of things which other dogs of Christians had 
never seen, thanks to the gratitude of old Pachas, 
rejuvenated and resuscitated by this importation from 
the Court of Louis XV. 

As he talked he stretched out his hand mechanically 
toward a flaçon of smelling salts that Juliette had laid 
on the table. This flaçon was cut from a wondrous 
gem. In obedience to his movement the actress 
pushed it towards him. He thrust it back saying : 

“ No, I should break it ! ” 

And when he saw the intense amazement of Juliette’s 
face he added : 

“Yes I am the victim of a most peculiar malady; 
when I take a precious article in my hand and realize 
its value, a most extraordinary thing comes to pass, 
the reflux action of the brain transmitting its will to 
the abductive and prehensile muscles, changes their 
movements into the pulse opposite that which is 


A STRANGER. 


233 


commanded. There is in me a functional impotence 
which makes me drop the thing, and in a moment 
it lies in a thousand fragments on the ground. 

It is, the physicians say, a preponderance of the brain 
annihilated by the nervous influx of the marrow. No, 
you are mistaken, Annandale, this affection has nothing 
in common with “ the writers’ cramp,” it is precisely 
the contrary. In that case, the contraction is exagge- 
rated and tetanized so to speak, while in mine there is 
absolute, but momentary paralysis. In short I am 
an interesting case — at all events so my friend Dr. 
Bennett considers me, and is to devote a whole para- 
graph to me in his next book, under the head of 
Nervous Diseases.” 


234 


PREOCCUPATION . 


CHAPTER XLIV. 

PREOCCUPATION. 

D URING the evenings as they sat in the Villa 
Isemburg around the fire, Lord Annandale had 
of La Faustin only her physical presence — only her 
body — the woman’s mind was no longer there : it was 
in la Rue de Richelieu. 

The actress saw herself driving up there, and jump- 
ing from her coupé to be led up stairs by old Ranaud. 
She saw her name on the bills pasted on the walls. 
She nodded kindly to the concièrge who respectfully 
removed his cap. She ran lightly up the stairs, paus- 
ing at the different landings to look down into the deep 
dark well. She saw the windows without shutters or 
curtains, all blazing with lights — before which passed 
shadows of people. 

She was in her dressing-room once more, rehearsing 
to her sister or the prompter, and breathless with the 
sweet anxiety, which was ever new each night she 
played. 

She saw herself in the loose, soft folds of her costume 
in Phèdre. Again she trod the boards — the boards 
whereon she alone really lived. 

She looked through the hole in the curtain at the 
brilliant audience. She beheld in the fifth loge on the 


PREOCCUPATION. 


235 


right the old Duchesse de Tailleburg, the never-fading 
spectator when she played. 

She saw the orchestra, the same musicians in the 
same seats, and near the little door the wig of the 
Marquis de Fontebise. She felt herself all thrilled 
with pride, pride that this intellect and intelligence 
had gathered there to be stirred and thrilled by her. 
She appeared on the stage amid quickened pulses and 
bated breath, and was welcomed by the silent, respect- 
ful admiration shown to all great artists. 

She played and was greeted with thunders of ap- 
plause — a noise of which she had long felt the sharp 
necessity, a noise which she had sought mechanically — 
astonished at its absence among the voices of Nature. 

And Juliette’s face, when her thoughts had wan- 
dered thus far, had all the fever, and the dilatation of 
the nostrils of an actress who treads the boards. 

“You have not spoken this evening, Juliette, of 
what are you thinking ? ” 

It was her lover’s voice. 

“ Thinking ! Of nothing, my friend. Ah ! it wants 
a quarter of ten.” 

And the hour thus indicated on the great face of 
this German clock reminded her only that it was the 
hour when she was in the habit of making her entreé 
in the second act of Phèdre. 

Then La Faustin drew her work basket toward her, 
and occupied herself in some of those pretty employ- 
ments where stitches must be counted and which per- 
mitted her to return to her dreams, and to rehearse to 


236 


PREOCCUPATION. 


herself an entire dramatic evening in Paris. Notwith* 
standing her resistance, her struggles and her efforts, 
the master passion had gained full possession of La 
Faustin. She was again clutched by the claws of her 
old vocation, by the all-powerful servitude imposed on 
the future by long years passed in the worship of 
beloved tasks. 

So great are the fascinations of the Theatre that, 
as the managers will tell you, even the mechanics 
who have once worked there, will not, cannot work 
elsewhere, even if they are much better paid. 

In spite of her happiness and of her love for Lord 
Annandale, La Faustin began to feel the emptiness 
and inactivity of her life. 

In this woman, who was made by Nature for the 
Theatre, whose every inflexion of voice, and every 
attitude was theatrical and spontaneous — which is 
rarer than is supposed, even among great actresses — it 
was as if all her faculties were exasperated by this 
long repose — this slumber of several months. 

It was with the greatest difficulty she restrained 
herself; her great tragic gestures were hampered by 
her narrow robes, and at some moments it seemed to 
her that the accumulations of verses stored away in 
her memory and condemned to silence, would burst 
through her closed lips in furious rebellion. 

Even the eyes of this woman were changed. The 
cold, imperious, distant look had returned to them, 
the look of the actress, the almost painful tension of 
observation to the comic or dramatic manifestations of 


PREOCCUPATION. 237 

the people about her — in her eager seeking for the 
impassioned element in new creations. 

She felt that she was conquered, utterly conquered. 

Lately Lord Annandale had returned to the question 
of marriage. He would listen to no refusal and im- 
plored her to become his wife. La Faustin refused as 
she had already refused in Paris. But when she ques- 
tioned herself closely she was obliged to confess that 
her sense of what was right was not the only cause of 
her refusal, and that now, when she answered again in 
the negative it was because in the depths of her heart 
she cherished the hope of returning some day to the 
stage, for that a time would come when Lord Annan- 
dale would cease to love her, she with lier many 
sorrowful experiences felt very sure. 

And she wrote to Paris in regard to her stage 
dresses, which, in her haste to escape from her engage- 
ments and with the idea that her desertion of the 
stage was irrevocable, she had left in her wardrobes. 
She begged Maria to see them packed away in large 
chests, which she requested her to have made for the 
purpose. 


238 


STAGNATION. 


CHAPTER XLV. 

i STAGNATION. 

“ "VT OUR orders, Madame ? ” 

X These words were uttered in a surly undertone 
by a thick-set man standing motionless, hat in hand, 
near the door that he had closed behind him. 

It was Juliette’s coachman, who had come to take 
her orders. 

La Faustin looked up at this massive frame crowned 
by a shock of red hair, and, with a French shrug of 
her shoulders, said, “Ah!” and then, in a dismal tone, 
added, “Yes — wait a moment.” 

The actress questioned herself as to what she should 
do with the long day. She wondered if there were no 
drive in the vicinity she had not tried, or should she 
walk. Perhaps active exercise would give a new 
direction to her thoughts. 

The man stood as if carved out of stone. He did 
not repeat his question, but waited. 

Suddenly La Faustin’s wandering eyes happened to 
rest on him, and she remembered that she had given 
no order. 

She began anew to cudgel her brain for her thoughts 
had wandered far away. The truth was she felt too 
listless to go out or even to move, and involuntarily 


STAGNATION. 


239 


the recollection of old Ranaud, her coachman in Paris, 
came to her. She remembered his gayety, his interest 
in all her amusements, and the good humor with which 
he drove her all over Paris. And with this vivid 
recollection of his bright, happy face she looked again 
on the impassible, expressionless physiognomy before 
her. Out of all patience she uttered an imperative 
“ Go ! ” in the tone and with the manner of a theatri- 
cal Queen. This scene took place four mornings out 
of seven when the English coachman came to receive 
orders from his French mistress. 

It was in this way that Juliette announced her 
intention of remaining in the house. 

The garden of the villa ended in an immense ter- 
race built of solid blocks of granite thrown out over 
the Lake. There were seats on this terrace, and lean- 
ing over the low wall one could look down into the 
tranquil depths of the water. 

It was there that La Faustin, having taken a great 
disgust to all exercise, passed the greater portion of 
the day. Sheltered under a huge umbrella, and indo- 
lently reclining in a corner of the stone bench with 
one foot under her, she was utterly idle. A faint 
tinge of rose color imparted by the silk of her um- 
brella on her lovely, weary face, she looked for hours 
at the beautiful green water and at the great black 
fish, motionless as if asleep, all the while that the sun 
shone, their immobility and the stagnant water both 
reminding her of her inert life, of her wasted existence. 


240 


ANXIETY. 


CHAPTER XLYI. 

ANXIETY. 

“ T CANNOT make out your friend, Selwyn,” 

L said Juliette, one day, to Lord Annandale, after 
Selwyn had left the room preparatory to starting for 
Munich, where he went two or three times in each 
week. 

Lord Annandale, who was lighting his cigar, put it 
to his lips, and looking Juliette full in the face, replied: 

“ George Selwyn is a very peculiar person. A man 
who had led a very bad and very irregular life. But 
why do you care anything about him ? he has nothing 
to do with us ! ” 

And he began to pace the room, saying as he smoked : 

“ He is immensely clever — immensely cultivated, and 
a very old friend.” 

After this came a long silence. 

“Are you going out to-day?” he said, finally. 

“No — ” was the reply. 

Upon this “No,” Lord Annandale went to the 
stables. 

La Faustin could not dismiss Selwyn from her mind. 
She remembered the positive loathing she had felt 
when she first saw this stranger, and her intense 
annoyance when she found that he was domiciled in 


A \ y T F T Y . 


SU 


the Villa. She was, moreover, conscious that from 
the very beginning she had been jealous of the influ- 
ence he exercised over her . lover. She asked herself 
of what nature the ties could be between her lover and 
this man. She could not remember that she had ever 
heard Lord Annandale mention his name until the day 
that Selwyn appeared before her. 

She went back to the early days of her acquaintance 
with the young Englishman. Suddenly she recalled 
one night in Scotland, when a glorious full moon made 
the old Park with its gigantic trees, a fairy-like scene. 
There, apropos of nothing, her lover had thrown 
himself at her feet, and with wild words thanked her 
for the sweet mercy of her love ; he told her how it 
had saved him from sin and shame, and brought him 
back from the brink of an abyss to which he had been 
dragged by the pernicious counsel and example of an 
impious fiend. 

The words “ a very old friend,” just uttered by Lord 
Annandale brought all this back to her. She felt 
certain that Selwyn was “the impious fiend” and his 
“ the pernicious counsel and example.” 

She remembered now certain disconnected phrases 
which she had heard when the two men were talking 
together, and she shivered with a strange horror. 

15 


242 


FOREBODINGS. 


CHAPTER XLVII. 


FOREBODING S . 


UTUMN had come, the flowers were withering in 



jTjL the garden, brown and yellow leaves carpeted 
the ground, the wind roared and wailed through the 
desolate branches of the trees. The sky was pale and 
colorless, the water of one uniform shade of gray, and 
La Faustin was sad and restless ; she was haunted by a 
morbid fear of the future, of herself, and of everything 
and everybody. 

The Villa itself was mournful in its decrepitude, 
which had been in a measure concealed by clambering 
vines. An Italian style of architecture under a Ger- 
man sky was not a happy combination. There was 
something unnatural and weird in the whole effect of 
the place, and it seemed to her at times as if it were a 
stage setting for some great tragedy. 

Juliette had recently learned that the small Gothic 
Chapel which she had at first supposed to be a mere 
whim of the former proprietor, was in reality a tomb 
where the princess had been interred with her new 
born child. That night she dreamed of the loved and 
loving young creature, as she lay among flowers hold- 
ing her tiny infant on her breast under her folded 
arms. 


FOREBODINGS. 


243 


From this time this great estate assumed in her eyes 
the aspect of one of those places overshadowed by some 
terrible crime or misfortune ; where, despite all change 
of inmates, and windows thrown open to sunlight, 
mourning and desolation will always linger. 

The persons among whom she resided — the old 
English woman — the diplomate — and the Honorable 
George Selwyn, began to look to her like ghosts, like 
creatures seen in a troubled dream. 

The very lacqueys with their stolid faces, who started 
as if moved by springs to their six feet of height as 
she passed through the ante-room, added to the sense 
of unreality she felt. 

This Parisian had always resided in gay and joyous 
surroundings, and this depressing atmosphere weighed 
upon her. 

The men and women with whom she had spent her 
life were tangible and real, and could be easily read — 
they were human beings. These on the contrary were 
phantoms of a fever stricken brain. 

La Faustin wandered nervously from room to room, 
noticing in the shadows of a closely shuttered window 
a cradle and other famity relics, looking as if they 
had been dropped in a sudden flight from some doomed 
spot. 

Among these pieces of furniture there was a small 
chiffonier, in front of which an invisible power held 
her motionless, and to which she returned again and 
again. 

The Princess Frederica had had a passion for lace 


244 


FOREBODINGS. 


and on each drawer of the chiffonier was gummed a 
card which bore in delicate characters written by the 
hand of the dead woman the words : 

Mechlin — Valenciennes — Chantilly — Alençon — 
Angleterre. 

Impelled by some strange impulse, La Faustin 
opened each of these drawers in succession, finding 
one and all entirely empty. Each time she did this 
she was more than ever impressed with the feeling 
that this house in which she lived was a house that 
would be fatal to her. 


RESTLESSNESS. 


245 


CHAPTER XLVIII. 


RESTLESSNESS. 



NE evening, when they were taking their after- 


dinner coffee at the Villa Isemburg, a servant 
brought a letter on a silver tray addressed to the Hon. 
George Selwyn. 

The Hon. George Selwyn, after opening it, handed 
it to his friend, saying : 

“ I regret extremely that I am obliged to leave you 
to-night, but some people are expecting me at my own 
house.” 

“Ah! yes — at the little house of which you spoke, 
on the coast of Brittany,” said Lord Annandale, as he 
glanced over the letter which was written in cypher. 

La Faustin also looked down at the sheet of paper 
and exclaimed : 

“Oh! what a lovely little picture at the top of the 
page.” And then leaning over with childish curiosity, 
slowly deciphered the words below the engraving: 

“ The Château de Dolmancé .” “ Is that the name of 

the place ? ” 

“Why, of course,” answered Lord Annandale, and 
as Juliette looked up she was terribly disconcerted 
by a strange, enigmatic smile on the lips of George 
Selwyn. 


246 


RESTLESSNESS; 


About this time, in a letter which she wrote to a 
sister in regard to some purchases she wanted made, 
La Faustin ended with this postscript : 

“You have not sent me, as I begged you to do, 
all the newspaper accounts of the début of Madame 
Jenny Lafon in Phèdre, and you have not told me 
which of my other rôles she proposes to play. Ah ! if 
I might only be permitted to return to the stage for a 
few months I would gladly play the confidante to her 
Queens ! ” 


ILLNESS. 


247 


CHAPTER XLIX. 

ILLNESS. 

A ND the tête-à-tête life of the two lovers began 
again in the Isemburg villa. 

The departure of the English Honorable, had re- 
lieved La Faustin of her secret anxiety, and a plan 
was about to be carried out in the preparations for 
which, her mad longing for Paris and the stage was for 
the moment thrust aside. 

Lord Annandale had proposed to pass the winter in 
Italy, and he and Juliette were filled with the delight 
that precedes an entire change of scene and a journey 
to a distant land. It was decided that they should 
travel in their own carriage and with their own horses, 
loitering wherever it seemed to them good, and passing 
quickly through any towns in which they were not 
interested. 

Leaning over a map spread out on the table, their 
heads close together, they laid out the line of their 
future journey, amid the gay and delightfully ignorant 
questions of the woman and the replies of Lord 
Annandale, who was entirely familiar with the ground. 

“There,” he said, placing the tip of Juliette’s finger 
on a tiny round spot, “there I will buy you a gold 
ring such as is made in no other place in Europe.” 


248 


ILLNESS. 


He had learned to take photographs in India, and 
he intended to travel with all the necessary articles to . 
continue the amusement. 

“You will like it,” he said, “and you must help 
me. We w T ill bring back views we have taken together 
in the most remote and secluded portions of Italy.” 

The English lady had gone to England, where she 
was to remain while the lovers were away. The 
trunks were packed, and the day of departure was 
fixed for Monday of the following week. 

Just at dawn Lord Annandale rose to open the win- 
dows and let in a little of the fresh morning air, for 
the room felt strangely close to him. He attempted 
to lift the sash, but did not succeed, and said, faintly : 

“ Juliette ! come quickly, Juliette ! ” 

Aroused from her sleep by this appeal, which she 
heard, faint as it was, Juliette beheld her lover cling- 
ing with both hands to the frame of the window, and 
evidently about to fall. 

La Faustin rushed to him and took him in her arms. 

Lord Annandale, assisted by her, attempted to reach 
the bed, but his limbs sank under him and La Faustin 
felt that he had fainted. 

She screamed for help, but there was no one near 
enough to hear her — and she could not leave him to 
ring the bell. 

Then she summoned all her strength, and raising 
William in her arms, she staggering under his weight, 
with her eyes fixed on his, which were widely open 
and full of the terror that assails those in full health, 
who are struck down with some mortal disease. 


SOLITUDE. 


249 


CHAPTER L. 


SOLITUDE. 


ORD ANNANDALE did not recover his con* 



I J sciousness when Juliette laid him upon the bed. 
His eyes were open and he breathed heavily. His lips 
formed words, but they were meaningless and ended 
in childish sobs. 

It seemed to Juliette, however, as she leaned over 
to place in his mouth a bit of ice, that his eyes dwelt 
on hers for an instant, and that she could distinguish 
in them a faint expression of gratitude, but this 
expression, if it really existed, vanished in another 
moment, and all was vacancy. 

Constant at her post by the side of this bed of 
sickness — for Juliette would allow no one to take her 
place there for a moment — she watched for days and 
days. She saw the dawn steal into the room, paling 
the dying candles, while the nights seemed endless. 

The physician came regularly twice each day, and it 
was plain to Juliette that he was greatly puzzled by 
the strange and inexplicable malady of his patient. 

The joyous plans and happy life of these two persons 
had come to an end. They were now compelled to 
face the thought of eternal separation and the presence 


of Death. 


250 


SOLITUDE. 


And was this the end of a love that they had called 
eternal, and which was not yet a twelve month old ? 
Could this be true ? Could this be possible ? Could 
it be that when she walked it would never again be 
with him — that on his arm she would lean no more ? 
And, when she sat at table, he would never again sit 
opposite her, and when she slept it would not be with 
the sweet consciousness that waking, her eyes would 
rest on his dear face — that she should never again hear 
him put in words the same thoughts that had come 
into her head at that moment, and that she should 
never again have his eyes to see for her ! 

Forever more her life would be a terrible solitude; 
and her days would be without sunshine or joy. 

Had she been prepared for this terrible shock by 
long months of illness, by a gradual fading away, by 
anxious faces and whispered conferences, by all the 
cruel warnings that familiarize one with the dread 
possibility which she now, with all the obstinacy of a 
heart that loves, refused to accept. 

It seemed to her that some slight warning, had it 
been ever so trifling, would have made this sorrow 
easier to bear. 

And during all this time passed at the side of her 
dying lover, time that was marked with neither days 
nor hours, La Faustin was as one stunned by some 
terrible blow on the head. 

Her brain was in confusion, her ears filled with the 
sound and rush of waters, and all the sensation of 
which she w r as fully conscious was that of sullen revolt 
against God and Providence. 


SOLITUDE. 


251 


By degrees however the reality became clear to her, 
and with an impatient gesture she would thrust it 
aside. 

“ The Doctor has not said,” she would murmur “ he 
has not said one word which is a positive condemna- 
tion ; any day may bring a change for the better, he is 
so young ! ” 

Then again she would bury her head in her hands, 
and above the tempestuous throbbing of her temples, 
Juliette seemed to hear innumerable low voices whis- 
pering, and even the flies buzzing on the window panes 
told the same sad story. 

44 Death ! Death ! Death ! ” 


252 


DEATH. 


CHAPTER LI. 


DEATH . 


HE room in which Lord Annandale lay in a huge 



JL bed hung with red silk, was a dreary, lofty 
apartment. The furniture was of the stiff forms of the 
Moyen Age, and of that modern Gothic which is used 
at the Boulevard theatres when dramas of a past cen- 
tury are played. Upon the marble table among sev- 
eral sticky teaspoons was a row of vials and bottles, 
some with corks drawn, and others just as they had 
come from the apothecary. Through a glass door two 
gigantic lacqueys in livery could be seen half asleep in 
big arm chairs. 

Without was the vast extent of gray water, and 
occasionally through the open window came little puffs 
of air that made the lamp flicker and added another 
element of desolation to the room. 

Seated at the foot of the bed, with her head buried 
in the covering was La Faustin, weeping bitterly over 
this sick man, whose body was inert, but whose pale 
fingers plucked at the sheet drawn over his chest. 

When she lifted her head, the physician whose 
entrance she had not heard stood beside her, an old 
man with long hair brushed back like Jenner and 
dressed in the ecclesiastical coat of a Protestant 
clergyman. 


DEATH. 


253 


His eyes were fixed upon the sick man “Yes!” he 
murmured under his breath, “yes, it is beginning! ” 

“Ah! My God! what are you saying!” And La 
Faustin abruptly checked herself. 

Courage, Madame ! ” said the physician gently. 

He seated himself by the side of the bed, and with 
the cold eye of science studied the dying man. 

La Faustin, who had taken William’s hand with 
caresses like those lavished by mothers when they 
seek to calm the angry and nervous excitement of 
their little ones, endeavored to still the restless hands 
and to put an end to this appalling twisting and 
pulling of the sheets. 

The physician watched the face of the dying man 
with fixed attention ; this attention gradually changed 
into astonishment. 

He leaned over the bed for a few moments in silence 
and then, rising from his chair, went to the other side 
of the patient, as if to see him better. 

“ Impossible ! ” he murmured. 

He took from his pocket a silk handkerchief with 
which he rubbed and polished the glasses of his spec- 
tacles. He then went to the lamp and took off the 
shade, allowing the light to fall full on the face of the 
young Lord. And standing by the side of this bed, 
his rigid silhouette thrown on the white sheets, he 
repeated his “ Impossible ! ” and continued to utter 
disconnected phrases. 

“ No, it is not an illusion — no, it is something I 
have long wished to see. Madame, please notice the 
convulsive play of these muscles. It is a case such as 


254 


DEATH. 


I have never met with in the whole course of my 
professional practice. 

German books — English and French have given to 
dying agonies like this a name, but they have not 
described them fully, and the only positive assurance 
we have of their existence comes from Madame 
d’Epinay, one of your countrywomen, who wrote in 
the last century. 

“Look, Madame. You see that the contraction of 
the muscles simulates the perfect laugh. Ah ! Mad- 
ame, you are about to witness a most distressing scene, 
an agonie sardonique. I must leave you, now, but only 
for a few minutes. I must go to the Villa Hallenberg, 
and return at once, as I wish to make notes on the 
phenomena that are about to take place.” 

When Juliette was left alone in this room she was 
overwhelmed with terror and seized with a mad im- 
pulse to fly. She wished to close the window and 
keep out the sighing night wind, but she did not dare 
move. She wanted to call her servants whom she 
had herself sent away, but she had not the courage to 
stir a finger. She could not turn her eyes from the 
tortured face of the dying man. That semblance of a 
laugh nearly killed her. 

At last she covered her eyes with her two hands, 
and sat in that way for hours. 

The physician did not come. It was near midnight, 
that fatal hour so dreaded by all who watch by the 
bedside of the dying, and still La Faustin sat motion- 
less with her face buried in her hands, not daring to 
look again at her lover. 


DEATH. 


255 


At the end of a time that seemed to her a century, 
she ventured to take one glance through her parted 
fingers. Presently she looked again, seized by a brutal 
curiosity, under the influence of which both her terror 
and her grief were in a measure assuaged. 

Presently she found that it was absolutely impossi- 
ble to move her eyes from the appalling sight before 
her. Her hands fell from before her face and grasped 
each other nervously on her knees, and she sat motion- 
less, looking in spite of herself. 

Her long-continued gaze established a mysterious 
sympathy, as is often seen in hospitals, where nervous 
attacks among the patients seem absolutely contagious 
at times. And presently the lips of the actress uncon- 
sciously repeated the movements of the lips of the 
dying man, and she actually imitated the horrible 
laugh she saw there, for it was no longer the faint 
smile which had been detected by the physician. The 
movement of the muscles had now increased to such a 
degree that the features were convulsed as in uproar- 
ious laughter, keeping time with the ominous rattle 
in the throat, and the piteous, discolored lips moved 
with a frightful caricature of a laugh — that sweet 
indication on a human face of happiness and joy. 

Never was there a more terrible sight presented to 
the eyes of a great tragic actress. 

And this spectacle aroused all the dramatic instinct 
of the actress. She forgot her sorrow, she forgot that 
the man she loved lay dying before her. 

And insensibly the involuntary nervous movement 
which a few minutes before had caused her to imitate 


256 


DEATH. 


these ghastly movements, changed into deliberate repe- 
titions — a studied imitation, as if she were rehearsing 
a new rôle for a dying scene on the stage — and the 
laugh she saw on the lover’s lips she saw also on her 
own when she turned her questioning eyes on the old- 
fashioned mirror behind her. 

As she stood thus absorbed, La Faustin heard a sud- 
den and violent ringing of the bell at the foot of the 
bed, and looking around she met the eyes of the dying 
man, to whom consciousness had returned as by a 
miracle. 

Two servants hastily entered the room. 

“Turn out that woman!” said the young Lord, 
in a voice which told the whole story of the stern 
implacability of the Saxon race. 

La Faustin rushed to her lover, and seizing his 
hands pressed her lips upon them. 

He thrust her away and said, slowly : 

“ You are an actress — you are only that — a woman 
incapable of love ! ” 

And, turning his face to the wall to await the coming 
of Death, Lord Annandale said again, and still more 
imperatively : 

“ Turn out that woman ! ” 


THE END. 



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MAJOR JONES’S COURTSHIP 

AND MAJOR JONES’S OTHER BOOKS, JUST PUBLISHED BY 

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MAJOR JONES’S COURTSHIP. 

Major Jones's Courtship. Author's New, Enlarged, and Rewritten 
Edition. Detailed in a Series of Letters, with Humorous Scenes, Incidents, and 
Adventures during his Courtship. By Major Joseph Jones, of Pineville, Georgia, 
author of “ Raney Cottem’s Courtship,” “ Major Jones's Travels,” “ Major Jones's 
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MAJOR JONES’S TRAVEES. 

Major Jones’s Travels. Comprising Humorous Scenes, Incidents, and 
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town he passed through. By Major Joseph Jones, of Pineville, Georgia, author 
of “ Major Jones’s Courtship,” “Raney Cottem’s Courtship,” “Major Jones’s 
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Major Jones’s Courtship and Major Jones’s Travels. 

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MAJOR JONES’S GEORGIA SCENES. 

Major Jones’s Georgia Scenes. Comprising his celebrated Sketches 
of Scenes in Georgia, with their Incidents and Characters. By Major Joseph 
Jones, of Pineville, Georgia, author of “Major Jones’s Courtship,” “Raney 
CoPem's Courtship,” “Major Jones’s Travels,” etc. With Twelve Full Page 
Illustrations, on Tinted Plate Paper, by Darley. One volume, square 12mo., 
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RANCY COTTEM’S COURTSHIP. 

Raney Cottem’s Courtship. Author's Edition. Detailed with Other 
Humorous Sketches and Adventures. By Major Joseph Jones, of Pineville, Geor- 
gia, author of “ Major Jones’s Courtship,” “ Major Jones’s Travels,” “ Major Jones’s 
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by Cary. One volume, square 12mo., uniform with “ Major Jones’s Courtship,” 
price 50 cents in paper cover, or in cloth, price $1.00. 

SIMON SUGGS’ ADVENTURES. 

Simon Suggs’ Adventures. Late of “The Tallapoosa Volunteers,'* 
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Hooper, author of “ Widow Rugby’s Husband.” With a Portrait of Captain Simon 
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THE EOUISIANA SWAMP DOCTOR. 

The Eonisiana Swamp Doctor. Together with “Cupping an 
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boat,” “The Curious Widow,” “Love in a Garden,” and other Southern Sketches. 
By Madison Tensas, M.D., of Louisiana, author of “Cupping on the Sternum,” 
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THE FOLLOWING ARE SEVENTY-FIVE CENTS EACH. 
MAJOR JONES’S COURTSHIP. With 21 full page Illustrations by Darley. 
MAJOR JONES’S TRAVELS. Full uf Illustrations by Darley. 

MAJOR JONES’S GEORGIA SCENES. Illustrated by Darley. 

SIMON SUGGS’ ADVENTURES. By Johnson J. Hooper. Illustrated. 

THE LOUISIANA SWAMP DOCTOR. Full of Illustrations by Darley. 

The above are also issued, botind in cloth, price One Dollar Each . 

WILD WESTERN SCENES ; OR, LIFE ON THE PRAIRIE. Illustrated. 
THE BIG BEAR OF ARKANSAS. By T. B. Thorpe. Illustrated by Darley. 
YANKEE AMONG THE MERMAIDS. By William E. Burton. 

THE MYSTERIES OF THE BACKWOODS. By T. B. Thorpe. 

QUARTER RACE IN KENTUCKY. With Illustrations by Darley. 

WIDOW RUGBY’S HUSBAND. By Johnson J. Hooper. Full of illustrations. 
STREAKS OF SQUATTER LIFE AND WILD WESTERN SCENES. 
CHARCOAL SKETCHES. By Joseph 0. Neal. Illustrated. 

THE DRAMA IN POKER VÏLLE. By J. M. Field. Illustrated. 

POLLY PEABLOSSOM’S WEDDING. * With Illustrations. 

PICKINGS FROM THE NEW ORLEANS PICAYUNE. Illustrated. 

STRAY SUBJECTS ARRESTED AND BOUND OVER. Illustrated. 

PETER FABER’S MISFORTUNES. By Joseph C. Neal. Illustrated. 

PETER PLQDDY AND OTHER ODDITIES. By Joseph C. Neal. 

NEW ORLEANS SKETCH BOOK. With Illustrations by Darley. 

THE DEERSTALKERS. By Frank Forester. Illustrated. 

THE QUORNDON HOUNDS. By Frank Forester. Illustrated. 

MY SHOOTING BOX. By Frank Forester. Illustrated. 

THE WARWICK WOODLANDS. By Frank Forester. Illustrated. 
ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN FARRAGO. Bv H. II. Brackenridge, 
ADVENTURES OF MAJOR O’REGAN. By H. H. Brackenridge. 

SOL SMITH’S THEATRICAL APPRENTICESHIP. Illustrated. 

SOL SMITH’S THEATRICAL JOURNEY-WORK. Illustrated. 

PERCIVAL MAYBERRY’S ADVENTURES. Bv J. H. Ingraham. 

SAM SLICK’S YANKEE YARNS AND YANKEE LETTERS. 

ADVENTURES OF FUDGE FUMBLE AND HIS LOVE SCRAPES. 

AUNT PATTY’S SCRAP BAG. By Mrs. Caroline Lee Hentz. 

ABOVE BOOKS ARE SEVENTY-FIVE CENTS EACH. 

RANGY COTTEM'S COURTSHIP. By author of “ Major Jones’s Courtship.»’ 

Illustrated. Price 50 cents in paper cover, or $1.00 in cloth. 
FOLLOWING THE DRUM. By Mrs. Gen. Viele. Price 50 cents. 

THE AMERICAN JOE MILLER. With Engravings. Price 50 cents. 


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Price One Dollar Each , in Cloth , Black and Gold. 


LADY EDITH; or, ALTON TOWERS. A very Charming and Fascinating work. 
MYRTLE LAWN ; or. True Love Never Ran Smooth. A Ileal Love Story. 

A WOMAN’S THOUGHTS ABOUT WOMEN. By Miss Mulock. All should read it 
TWO WAYS TO MATRIMONY; or, Is It Love, or. False Pride? 

THE STORY OF “ELIZABETH.” By Miss Thackeray, daughter of W. M. Thackeray. 
FLIRTATIONS IN FASHIONABLE LIFE. By Catharine Sinclair. 

THE MATCHMAKER. A Society Novel. By Beatrice Reynolds. Full of freshness and truth. 
ROSE DOUGLAS, The Bonnie Scotch Lass. A Companion to “Family Pride.” 

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FAMILY SECRETS. A Companion to “Family Pride,” and a very fascinating work. 

THE MACDERMOTS OF BALLYCLORAN. An Exciting Novel by Anthony Trollope. 
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THE FRIDE OF LIFE. A Love Story. By Lady Jane Scott. 


THE RIVAL BELLES ; or. Life in Washington. By author “Wild Western Scenes.” 
THE CLYFFARDS OF CLYFFE. By James Payn, author of “ Lost Sir Massingherd.” 
THE ORPHAN’S TRIALS; or. Alone in a Great City. By Emerson Bennett 


THE HEIRESS OF SWEETWATER. A Love Story, abounding with exciting scenes. 
LOST SIR MASSINGBERD. A Love Story. By author of “ The Clyffards of Clyffe.” 
CORA BELMONT; or, THE SINCERE LOVER. A True Story of the Heart. 
THE LOVER’S TRIALS ; or. The Days Before the Revolution. By Mrs. Deniso*. 
MY SON’S WIFE. A strong, bright, interesting and charming Novel. By author of “ Caste.” 
AUNT PATTY’S SCRAP BAG. By Mrs. Caroline Lee Ilentz, author of “ Linda,” “Rena.” 
SARATOGA! AND THE FAMOUS SPRINGS. An Indian Tale of Frontier Life. 
COUNTRY QUARTERS. A Charming Love Story. By the Countess of Blessingten. 
SELF-LOVE. A B<>ok for Young Ladies, with their prospects in Single and Married Life contrasted. 
THE DEVOTED BRIDE ; or, FAITH AND FIDELITY. A Love Story. 

THE LIFE OF EDWIN FORREST. By Colley Cibber. With Reminiscences. 

THE MAN O F THE W ORLD. This is full of style, elegance of diction, and force of thought 
OUT OF THE DEPTHS. A Woman’s Story and a Woman’s Book, the Story of a Woman’s Life 


THE QUEEN’S FAVORITE ; or. The Price of a Crown. A Romance of Don J inn 
SIX NIGHTS WITH THE WASHINGTONIANS. By T. S. Arthur. Illustrated 
THE RECTOR’S WIFE; or, THE VALLEY OF A HUNDRED FIRES. 
THE COQUETTE; or, LIFE AND LETTERS OF ELIZA WHARTON 
WOMAN’S WRONG. A Book for Women. By Mrs. Eiloart. A Novel of great power. 
HAREM LIFE IN EGYPT AND CONSTANTINOPLE. By Emmeline Lott. 
THE OLD PATROON; or, THE GREAT VAN BROEK PROPERTY 
THE BROTHER’S SECRET. GAMBLING EXPOSED. By J. II. Green 


NANA. By Emile Zola. 
L’ASSOMMOIR. By Emile Zola. 
LOVE AND DUTY. By Mrs. Hubback. 
A LONELY LIFE. 

THE BEAUTIFUL WIDOW. 

THE REFUGEE. A delightful book. 


DREAM NUMBERS. By T. A. Trollope. 
WOODBURN GRANGE. By W. liowitt 
THE CAVALIER. By G. P. R. James. 
SHOULDER-STRAPS. By II. Morfoid 
ACROSS THE ATLANTIC. 

THE HEIRESS IN THE FAMILY. 


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Tile Banker’s ü&ais^hier. A Sequel to “ Joseph Wilmot.” Complete in one large volume, 
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Duke of Marclimont. Being the Conclusion of “The Countess of Lnscelhs.” Price 75 cent» 
Toe Child of Waterloo; or. The Horrors of the Tattle Field. Price 75 cents. 

Pickwick. Abroad. A Companion to the “Pickwick Papers,” by “ Boz.” Price 75 cents. 
The Countess and the Pai^e. One large octavo volume. Price 75 cents. 

Mary Stuart, Queen of Scot». Complete in one large octavo volume. Price 75 cents. 
'I'ae S®l(!ier ! s Wife, illustrated. One large octavo volume. Price 75 cents. 

May Middleton ; or. The History of a Fortune. In one large octavo volume. Price 75 cent. 
The Loves of the Harem. One large octavo volume. Price 75 cents. 

Ellen JPercy ; or. The Memoirs of an Actress. One laige octavo volume. Price 75 cents. 

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The Horrors of Paris. In one large octavo volume. Price 75 cents. 

The Man with Five Wives. In one large octavo volume. Price 75 cents. 

Sketches in Frames. In one large octavo volume. Price 75 cents. 

Fdiaa lie (Ihamb'irp; or. The Female Fiend. Price 75 cents. 

The Twin IAeuî;*ijaïiîs} or, The Soldier’s Bride. Price 75 cents. 

?3ad»ine «e Chamblay. In one large octavo volume. Price 50 cents. 

Bb’ii'k TTssHip. In one large octavo volume. Price 50 cents. 

Y!xe Corsican brother . In one large octavo volume. Price 50 cents. 

tT.»orge$ or. The Pilaster of the Isle of France. Price 50 cent* 

The Count of Morel. In one large octavo volume. Price 50 cents. 

The Marriage Yerdict. In one large octavo volume. Price 50 cents. 

5>oried Alive. In one large octavo volume. Price 25 cents. 

jxjf* Above bonks are for sale by all Booksellers and Hews Agents , or cop t-e* of 
n*~ more, will be sent to any one, post-paid, on remitting price to the Publishers , 

T. B. rUTKRSON & BKOTHEIiS, Philadelphia, 


Mrs. Emma D. £. N. Southworth/s New Book. 


THE EATAt MAAMAGE. 

BY MRS. E. D. E. K SOUTHWORTH. 

One Volume, Square l2mo. Paper Cover. Price Seventy-live Cent». 


'The Fatal Marriage: or, Orville Deville ," has just been issued in a remarkably cheap lut 
handsome shape by Messrs. T. B. Peterson & Brothers , Philadelphia. It has a beautifully illus- 
trated cover, which adds vastly to its attractiveness . " The Fatal Marriage ” is from the pen of 

that distinguished novelist, Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, and is one of the best and most 
exciting romances of modern times. The plot is of the strongest description, treating of the crime 
of bigamy committed by a heedless young man, the wrongs of the deceived wives, the pitiless ven- 
geance of that wild girl of the forest. Lionne, and the fearful sufferings of the bigamist. The pith 
of the really great story, of course, can only be gathered from the book itself, and it is safe to say 
that no one will be able to put it down, after once commencing to read it, until the final sentence 
has been reached. The incidents are thrilling in the highest degree, and follow each other with 
absolutely startling rapidity. The reader has hardly time to recover from the effect of the passion- 
ate love-scenes betiveen Deville and Lionne before the latter appears as the pitiless avenger of. her 
wrongs, pursues her delinquent husband and abducts his child. The character-sketching is remark- 
ably vivid and true to nature, and the introduction of an apparently supernatural element is well 
calculated to add muck to the intensity of the exciting novel. No one can afford to miss reading 
" The Fatal Marriage and its exceedingly moderate price places it within reach of all. 


COMPLETE LIST OF MRS. SOUTHWORTH’S WORKS. 

Mrs. Southworth' s Works are complete in forty-three volumes , bound in morocco cloth , 
gilt back , library style, price 5 1 -75 each, or $ 75.25 a set, each set in a neat box . 

Ishmael ; or, In the Depths. Being “ Self-Made.” 

Self-Raised ; or, Prom the Depths. Sequel to “ Ishmael.” 


The Fatal Marriage. 

The Deserted Wife. 

Love’s Labor Won. 

A Noble Lord. 

The Lost Heir of Linlithgow. 
The Artist’s Love. 

The Gipsy’s Prophecy. 

The Three Beauties. 

Vivia; or, the Secret of Power. 
The Two Sisters. 

The Missing Bride. 

The Wife’s Victory. 

The Mother-in-Law, 

The Haunted Homestead. 

The Lady of the Isle. 

Allworth Abbey. 

Retribution. 

The Curse of Clifton. 

The Discarded Daughter. 

The Mystery of Dark Hollow. 
The Phantom Wedding. 

Copies of any one 7 vork, or more, or a complete set of "■Mrs. South-worth's 

Works," will be sent to any one , to any address, at once, free of freight or postage, on 
remitting $1.75 for each one wanted , to T. B. Peterson &> Brothers , Philadelphia, Pa. 

’Address all orders and remittances to the Publishers, 


The Fortune Seeker. 

The Lost Heiress. 

Tried for Her Life. 

Cruel as the Grave. 

The Maiden Widow. 

The Family Doom. 

The Bride s Fate. 

The Changed Brides. 

Fair Play. 

How He Won Her. 

Victor’s Triumph. 

A Beautiful Fiend. 

The Spectre Lover. 

The Prince of Darkness. 
The Christmas Guest. 
Fallen Pride. 

The Widow s Son. 

The Bride of Llewellyn. 

The Fatal Secret. 

The Bridal Eve. 

India ; Pearl of Pearl River. 


EQUAL TO “HELEN’S BABIES.” 


MRS. MAYBURN’S TWINS. 

WITH HER TRIALS WITH THEM, IN THE 

linii, loi, Afternoon and Evening of One Day. 

©If HABBERTON. 

AUTHOR OF “HELEN’S BABIES." 

“Mrs. Mayburn's Twins ” is truthful, told with spirit and humor, is vivid, laugh- 
able and pathetic — it is natural and amusing — it is pretty and humorously told — every 
word in it is true — it is a pleasant story of domestic life^it will please the hearts of 
all to read it — it is a very funny and amusing story — it is a curious narrative , light, 
bright , rapid, picturesque and domestic — it will amuse and cheer all that read it, for 
it is an amusing, realistic, graphic, comical, graceful, tender and tota lling narrative — 
it is full of humor, is intensely real, and will invariably move the reader to laughter — 
it is a good book for every husband, wife, father and mother to read — it is a charming 
bit of work, filled to the brim with fun, frolic, and reality, and the author will have 
the thanks of every one that reads it, for there is in it a sweet undercurrent of pathos 
that lends a special charm to the whole story, from first to last . 

Paper Cover, 50 Cents. Morocco Cloth, Gilt and Black, $1.00. 


THE “HELEN’S BABIES” SERIES. 

Price 50 Centô Each in Paper Cover; or in Morocco Cloth, $1.00 each. 

MRS. MAYBURN’S TWINS. By John Habberton , author 
of “Helen’s Babies.” With Illustrated Cover and Portraits. 

HELEN’S BABIES. By John Habberton. HELEN’S 
BABIES. With Illustrated Cover and Portraits. 

BERTHA’S BABY. Equal to “ Helen's Babies." BERTHA’S 
BABY. With Illustrated Cover and Portraits. 

THE ANNALS OF A BABY. How it was Named — Babv ’g 
First Gifts — How it was Nursed — The Baby’s Party — The 
Baby’s Life, etc. By Mrs. Sarah Bridges Stebbins. 

féÈ* Above books will be found for sale by all Booksellers, at all News Stands every- 
where, and on all Railroad Trains, or copies of any one or all of them will be sent to 
any &*te, to any place, at once, per mail, post-paid, on re put tin g price to the publishers, 

T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS, Philadelphia, Pa. 


A FASCINATING- WOMAN. 

(XiAIDEl.) 

BT HADAIE EDMOSD ABAS. 

(JULIETTE LAMBEE.) 


“A FASCINATING Woman ” cannot help attracting a very large share of atten 
tion in this country , as it is a novel of peculiar power and interest. Notably orig- 
inal both in matter and treatment , it never for a moment relaxes its fascination , 
which begins on the first page. The writer is Madame Edmond Adam, now the most 
prominent woman in Europe, whose salon in Paris is frequented by all the notabilities 
of the day, French and foreign. Madame Adam is the editress of the Nouvelle Revue, 
a formidable rival of the Revue des Deux- Mondes, and her reputation as a writer is 
as great as her reputation as a politician. In “ Laide ” Madame Adam, it is asserted, 
has reproduced much of her own life experience, she having at one time been threat- 
ened with the loss of her wonderful pe) sonal charms through illness. At any rate, it 
may be regarded as certain that , in describing Helene's salon, she had the appearance 
of her own in view, and drew liberally upon it. The Ugly Woman's intellectuality , 
her artistic tastes, her desire to be considered eccentric, and her wish to have celebrities 
throng to her receptions all suggest RIadame Adam. Hélène is espoused by a man 
who loves her because she hates pretty women. He deserts her for the society of a beau- 
tiful Italian Marchesa, but his wife recovers her charms through the same means by 
which she lost them, and ultimately wins him back. The style is beautiful from its 
very plainness and simplicity. No recourse is had to the sensational, legitimate means 
alone being used to attract and hold the reader's attention. There are no sudden 
shocks, everything moving smoothly , as should be the case in good society, but neverthe- 
less the romance is exciting and the reader finds it impossible to shake off the spell of its 
enchantment. The characters are few, but their paucity of numbers is compensated 
for by their extreme naturalness. Hélène' s attempt at suicide is one of the most vivid 
and effective pieces of word-painting given to the xvorld for years, and the receptions are 
painted with taste that cannot be too ardently admired. The story is a masterpiece in 
eveiy point of view, has been excellently translated by John Stirling, who has retained 
all its Parisian flavor , and it will certainly be read and admired by thousands. 


Paper Cover, 75 Cents. Morocco Cloth, Gilt and Black, $1.23. 


fâgl* “A Fascinating Woman ” will be found for sale by all Booksellers , at ah 
News Stands, and on all Railroad Trains, or copies of it will be sent to any one , 
to any place , at once, per mail, post-paid , on remitting the price to the publishers , 

T. B. PETEKSON & BROTHERS, Philadelphia, Pa. 


PETERSONS’ NEW BOORS. 


HELEN’S BABIES. By John Habberton. HELEN’S BABIES. With Illustrated 
Cover and Portraits of Budge and Toddie. Price 50 cents in paper, cloth, $1.00. 
BERTHA’S BABY. Equal to “Helen’s Babies.” BERTHA’S BABY. With an Ulus- 
trated Cover and Portrait of “ Bertha’s Baby.” Paper, 50 cents, cloth, $1.00. 
THE INITIALS. A. Z. By the Baroness Tautphœus. Paper, 75 cents, cloth, $1.25. 
SABINE’S FALSEHOOD. A Charming Love Story. By the Princess Olga. Trans- 
lated by Mary Neal Sherwood. Price 75 cents in paper cover, or $1.00 in doth. 
NANA. By Emile Zola. NANA. An Entire New Edition. NANA. With an Illus- 
trated Cover and Portraits of Nana and others. Paper, 75 cents, or $1.00 in cloth 
NANA’S DAUGHTER. Sequel to Emile Zola’s novel of “ NANA.” With an Illus- 
trated Cover and Portraits. Price 75 cents in paper cover, or $1.00 in cloth. 
NANA’S MOTHER: or, L’ASSOMMOIR. By Emile Zola. With Illustrated Cover 
and Portraits of Nana’s Mother and others. Paper cover, 75 cents, or £1.00 in cloth. 
A PRINCE OF BREFFNY. By Thomas P. May , author of “The Earl of Mayfield.” 

One volume, duodecimo, library style, cloth, black and gold. Price $1.50. 

THE BRIDAL EVE. By Mrs. Southworth. Illustrated. Paper cover, price 75 cents. 
MONSIEUR, MADAME AND THE BABY. Paper cover, 75 cents, cloth, $1.00. 
PAUL HART; or, THE LOVE OF HIS LIFE. Paper cover, 75 cents, cloth, $1.25. 
HISTORY OF A PARISIENNE. By Octave Feuillet. Paper, 50 cents, cloth, $1.00. 
THE EXILES. A Russian Story. Price 75 cents in paper cover, or $1.00 in cloth. 
MILDRED’S CADET; or, HEARTS & BELL-BUTTONS. Paper, 75 cents, cloth, $1.00, 
MY HERO. By Mrs. Forrester. Paper cover, 75 cents, or $1.00 in cloth. 

CAMILLE; or, THE FATE OF A COQUETTE. Paper cover, 75 cents, cloth, $1.25. 
D0SIA. By Henry Greville. Paper cover, 75 cents, or $1.25 in cloth. 

VIDOCQ 1 THE FRENCH DETECTIVE. Illustrated. Paper, 75 cents, cloth, $1.00. 
THE EARL OF MAYFIELD. Paper cover, 75 cents, cloth, $1.00, library style, $1.50. 
MAJOR JONES’S COURTSHIP. Author’s New and Enlarged Edition. With 21 full 
page illustrations by Darley and Cary. Paper cover, 75 cents, cloth, $1.00. 
MADAME BOVARY. By Gustave Flaubert. Paper, 75 cents, cloth, $1.00. 

MAJOR JONES’S TRAVELS. With eight full page illustrations by Darley. By 
author of “Major Jones’s Courtship.” Paper cover. 75 cents; cloth, $1.00. 

THE WOMAN IN BLACK. A Society Novel. Paper cover, 75 cents, or $1.00 in cloth. 
MAJOR JONES’S GEORGIA SCENES. With 12 full page illustrations by Darley. 

By author of “Major Jones’s Courtship.” Paper cover, 75 cents; cloth, $1.00. 
LINDA. By Caroline Lee Hentz. Paper cover, 75 cents, or $1.25 in cloth. 

RANG Y COTTEM’S COURTSHIP. With 8 full page illustrations. By author tr 
“Major Joyies’s Courtship.” Paper cover, 50 cents; or in cloth, $1.00. 

SIMON SUGGS’ ADVENTURES. Illustrated by Darley. Paper, 75 cents, cloth, $1,00 
LOUISIANA SWAMP DOCTOR. Illustrated by Darley. Paper, 75 cents, cloth, $1.00. 
THE COUNT DE CAMORS. By Octave Feuillet. Paper, 75 cents, or $1.25 in cloth. 
KATHLEEN ! THEO! MISS CRESPIGNY ! PRETTY POLLY PEMBERTON! and 
A QUIET LIFE ! By Mrs. Burnett. Paper, 50 cents each, cloth, $1.00 each. 

giT The above works arc for sale by all Booksellers and at all News Scar de cv°rywhers, 
and on all Rail- Road Trains, or copies of any one, or all of them, will be sert to omy one 
to any place , per mail, post-paid , on remitting the price of the ones wanted to the Puolishet's. 

T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS , Philadelphia. 


PETERSONS’ NEW BOOKS 


B B BB 

THE MYSTERIES OP THE COURT OF LOUIS 
NAPOLEON. By Emile Zola, author of “Nana,” and 
“ L’Assorninoir.” Paper cover, 75 cents ; cloth, S1.25. 

A FASCINATING WOMAN. (LAIDE .) By Madame 
Edmond Adam, ( Juliette Lamb err'), who is commanding the 
attention of all Europe. Paper cover, 75 cents; cloth, $1.25. 

MBS» PîlAYBURM’S TWINS \ with Her Trials in the Morning , 
Noon , Afternoon and Evening of One Day. By John Habberton , 
author of “ Helen’s Babies.” Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00. 

MONSIEUR LE MINISTRE. A Romance in Real Life. 
By Jules Claretie. Translated by John Stirling. With Illus- 
trated Cover and Portraits. Paper cover, 75 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 

THE ANNALS OF A BABY. How it was Named — Baby’s 
First Gifts — The Baby’s Party — The Baby’s Life, etc. By 
Mrs. Sarah Bridges Stebbins . Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00. 

A CHILD OF ISRAEL. A Romance of the Heart. By 
Edouard Cadol. With Illustrated Cover and Portraits. 
Paper cover, 75 cents; cloth, $1.00. 

WINNING THE BATTLE; or, One Girl in Ten Thousand. 
By Mary Von- Er den Thomas. With Illustrated Cover and 
Portraits. Paper cover, 75 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 

THE FATAL MARRIAGE. By Mrs. Emma D. E. N. South- 
worth. With Illustrated Cover and Portraits. Price 75 cents. 

LADY EDITH; or, ALTON TOWERS. Being volume 
50 of “ Petersons’ Dollar Series.” Cloth, price One Dollar. 

INDIANA! A Love Story. George Sand’s master-piece. With 
Illustrated Cover and Portraits. Paper, 75 cents; cloth, $1.00. 

HELEN’S BABIES ! and BERTHA’S BABY ! With Illus- 
trated Covers. Paper cover, 50 cents each; cloth, $1.00 each. 

FRAN CATELLI’S MODERN COOK BOOK. With 63 
Illustrations. 1462 Receipts. 600 pages. Price $5.00. 

Igâp" The above vjorks are for sale by all Booksellers , at all New k Stands everywhere, and 

on all Rail- Road Trains, or copies of any one, or all of them, will be sent to any one, to 

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T. B. PETERSON J BROTHERS t Philadelphia, Pa. 


EMI L E ZOLA’S NEW BOOK. 

- KM 

THE MYSTERIES OF THE 

Court of Louis Napoleon. 

IB 1ZT ZEUMIIIILIE ZOLA. 

AUTHOR OF "NANA,” " l’ ASSOMMOIR I OR, NANA’S MOTHER,” “ HELENE; OR, UNE PAGE d’AMOUR,” 
"THERESE RAQUIN,” "THE MARKETS OF PARIS,” "THE CONQUEST OF PLASSANS,” 

" THE KOUGON-MACQUART FAMILY ; OR, MIETTE,” " MAGDALEN FERAT,” 

"albine; OR, THE Abbe’s TEMPTATION,” ETC., ETC. 

" The Mysteries of the Court of Louis Napoleon ,” by Emile Zola, just published by T. B. Peterson 
& Brothers, Philadelphia, is a strong and realistic novel, w ritten in the style that has made Zola famous 
the world over. It has absorbing interest, for in it he lays bare in thrilling language the inner life, 
intrigues, vices and corruptions of the Court of Louis N.v.poleon, and those who formed it. The cor- 
ruptions of the time are pictured with no uncertain hand, and pen-and-ink portraits of well-known 
public men of the period are given in abundance. Under transparent d sguises can be readily recog- 
nise! those who were at once the chief upholders and destroyers of the last Napoleonic empire. De 
Morny is sharply drawn, and there figures in the work an intriguing fair American of whom the news- 
papers have had much to say. As a picture of the manner in which a scorned and slighted woman 
avenges herself, this work is absolutely without a parallel. Altogether the book is highly interesting. 
It is published in a large square duodecimo volume, uniform with " Nana,” and “ L’Assommoir,” 
price 75 cents in paper cover, or $1.25 in cloth, and will be found for sale by all Booksellers, at all News 
Stands, and on all Railroad Trains, or copies of it w ill be sent to any one, to any place, at once, on 
remitting the price in a letter to the Publishers, T. B. Peterson & Brothers, Philadelphia, Pa. 

LIST OF EMILE ZOLA’S GREAT WORKS. 

The Mysteries of the Court of Fouis Nagioleon. By Emile Zola , author of 

"Nana,” and “ L' Assommoir.” Price 75 cents in paper cover, or #1.25 in Cloth, Black and Gold. 

Nana! The Sequel to "L’Assommoir.” Nana ! By Emile Zola. With a Picture 
"Nana” on the cover. Price 75 cents in paper cover, or One Dollar in Cloth, Black and Gold. 

L’Assommoir; or. Nana’s Mother. By Emile Zola, author of "Nana.” With a 
Picture of"Gervaise,” Natta’ s mother , on the cover. Price 75 cents in paper, or One Dollar in Cloth. 

Albine; or. The Abbe's Temptation. (La Faute «le iPAbbe Mouret.) By 

Emile Zola. With a Picture, of " Albine ” on the cover. Price 75 cents in paper, or $1.25 in Cloth. 

Hélène: a Love Episode; or. Lite Page IVAinour. By Emile Zola, author of 
"Nana.” With a Picture of "fl l line ” on the cover. Price 75 cents in paper cover, or $1.25 in Cloth. 

Magdalen Ferat. By Emile Zola , author of "Nana.” With a Ficture of "Magdalen 
Ferat ” on the cover. Price 75 cents in paper cover, or $1.25 in Cloth, Black ana Gold. 

Thérèse Staqnill. By Emile Zola, author of "Nana.” With a Portrait of "Emile Zola ” 
on the cozier. Price 75 cents in paper cover, or One Dollar in Cloth, Black and Gold. 

The Kougon-Maeqiuart Family; or. Miette. (La Fortune ties Rotigon.) 

By Emile Zola, author of "Nana.” Price 75 cents in paper cover, or $1.25 in Cloth. 

The Co iky nest of Plassans; or, La Conquête «le Plassans. By Emile Zola, 
author of "Nana.” Price 75 cents in paper cover, or $1.25 in Cloth, Black and Gold. 

The Markets of Paris; or, Fe Ven!r« «io Paris. By Emile Zola, author of 
"Nana.” Price 75 cents in paper cover, or $1.25 in Cloth, Black and Gold. 

Pot-Bonille. ami Rfiiéc: or, Fa Curé#*, By Emile Z,ola, author of "Nana,” are 
each in press. Price 75 cents each in paper cover, or One Dollar each in Cloth, Black and Gold. 

SCtf Above Books are for sale by all Booksellers, at all News Stands everywhere , and o-i all Rail- 
Road Trains, or copies of any one book, or all of them, soil l be sent to any one, to any place, at once, 
p~r nnuil, post-paid, on remitting the price of the ones wanted in a letter to the Publishers, 

T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS, Philadelphia, Pa. 


>83?* “It will save many dollars .” — Lynn {Mass.) Reporter. 

GET UP CLUBS FOR 18S2! CHEAPEST AND BEST!! 


PETERSON'S MAGAZINE 


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I. “HUSH! DON’T WAKE THEM.” 

II. PHOTOGRAPH ALBUM, GILT. 

III. EXTRA COPY OF MAGAZINE, 1882. 


43?“ A Supplement icill be given in every number f r 13S2 , containing a full-size pattern for a 
lady's i r child's d ess. Every subscriber w It receive , during the year , twelve of these patterns, worth, 
more , alone, according to the newspapers, than the entire subscription price. < %& 


“Peter'on’s Magazine” contains, every year, lOOO pages. 14 steel plates, 12 colored Berlin 
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Its immense circulation enables its proprietor to spend more ou embellishments, stories, etc. 
than any other. It gives more for the money, and combines more merits, than any in the world. It 
is famous for its 

SPLENDIDLY ILLUSTRATED ARTICLES, 

BEST ORIGINAL TALES AND NOVELETS, 
COLORED WORK-TABLE PATTERNS, &c. 

All the mo t vonnlar writers are employe l to write originally for “Peterson." In 1882 FIVE 
ORIGINAL COPYRIGHT NOVELETS will be given, by Ann S. Stephens, by Frank Lee Benedict, 1 y 
Jane G. Austin, by the author of “Josiali Allen’s Wife,” by Lucy H. Hooper, and by Airs. ILL. 
Cushing. It gives 



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LA FAUSTIN. 

A LIFE STUDY. 

BY EDIOED DE GOECOURT. 


“La Faustin ," by Edmond de Goncourt, is a novel of remarkable power and origi- 
nality. It belongs to the telling naturalistic school of fiction made so famous by Zola; 
but , while dealing with hard facts and doubtful phases of Paris life , it is always refined 
and never gross. La Faustin , the heroine , is a popular Parisian actress , modelled 
after the great Rachel , who is studying the role of Phèdre. She has a sister , Maria, 
who has withdrawn from the stage because of incompetency , and is the incarnation 
of all that is vile. La Faustin also has her moments of viciousness , but in general 
is marked by a certain degree of refinement and artistic taste. She desires to play 
Phèdre as Phèdre was , but feels the lack of the necessary passion. The first night 
comes , the role is enacted, and an immense triumph is scored. Then follows a grand 
supper at La Faustin' s house, which is attended by hosts of scientific , literary, political 
and artistic celebrities. Lord Annandale, an English nobleman, who had previously 
known the actress and been beloved by her, returns to her prior to the second impersona- 
tion of Phèdre, thus supplying the requisite passion, and the rendition receives a perfect 
ovation. A love idyl ensttes, the quietude of which is frequently broken by the actress' 
caprices. Later on, La Faustin quits the stage to please the Englishman. From this 
point the interest increases steadily in intensity up to the final catastrophe, and the 
reader finds it utterly vnpossible to take his eyes from the pages of the wonderful book. 
In the course of the narrative M. de Goncourt depicts rehearsals, the nonchalance of 
actresses, the behavior of their favored admirers and associates, and hosts of other points 
in that sphere of dissipation, Paris life, hesitating at nothing provided it be natural 
and pertinent to the novel in hand. A psychological phase is developed in the contrast 
between the two sisters, La Faustin and Maria, and throughout the work the author 
has drawn liberally on what the French writers of the naturalistic fraternity call 
“ human documents ," presenting a series of pictures painted in life tints of Parisian 
splendor, elegance, excitement, vice, malice and depravity. M. de Goncourt' s work 
is so powerful and so itnpressive that it cannot fail to reneiv in America the vast 
triumphs it achieved in France. Everybody should read “La Faustin." 


Paper Cover, 75 Cents. Morocco Cloth, Gilt and Black, $1.25. 


“La Faustin" will be found for sale by all Booksellers, at all News Stands, 
and on all Railroad Trains , or copies of it will be sent to any one, to any place , 
at once, per mail, post paid , on remitting the price to the publishers, 

T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS, Philadelphia, Pa. 












































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